Do Not Disturb

by Anna Cleary

  ‘I can’t believe what you’re doing to me,’ he said, his voice deep and gravelly. ‘Come here.’

  He dragged her to him and seared her lips with his in masterful possession, plundering her mouth with his tongue, sucking the breath from her lungs till she was giddy, then he broke the sizzling contact to devour her throat and breasts with urgent kisses.

  She struggled with the bow of her corselet but the lustful man couldn’t wait for her to take it off. He lifted one breast from its cup, licked the tender yearning nipple, then drew on it with his mouth.

  Oh, heavenly day. She mewled with pure pleasure, clinging to him as her bones dissolved in bliss, then, just when she thought her desire couldn’t blaze any brighter, he sucked on the other one as well, fanning the flames of her hunger to an inferno.

  Fire raged through her blood and in the tender folds between her thighs until her very channel burned with longing to take him inside.

  With a small growl he pushed her onto the bed, devouring her semi-nude body with his eyes while he stripped off the rest of his clothes and flung them aside.

  When she saw the proud extent of his virility, her blood slowed in her veins like treacle.

  ‘Oh, my,’ she purred, moistening her lips.

  There was little doubt of his enthusiasm for the task in hand. His magnificent erection jutted free and proud, and she felt her womb melt and juice dampen her between her legs in avid anticipation.

  She reached out and touched him, stroking his hot, hard penis, marvelling at the velvet skin encasing the engorged beauty. Closing her hand around the shaft, she felt the roiling surge of intense heat, and, amazingly, felt him harden still further in her grasp.

  ‘Careful,’ he bit out, closing his eyes, his voice a shuddering growl.

  Smiling, she rolled into the middle of the bed and lolled there with her head on the pillow, slowly parting her legs for him in voluptuous encouragement. He started in surprise, staring with his hot lubricious gaze, then deliberately leaned forward and drew her knickers off.

  A shiver of excitement rippled down her spine.

  He waited to see if she would resume the same enticing pose without her protective covering, and, challenged, she didn’t disappoint him.

  He stood smouldering, taking in her nakedness below the bustier, his eyes dark with desire, his powerful chest heaving, then all at once turned to swoop at his clothes and make a frantic search through the pockets.

  With an exclamation of satisfaction he produced a foil packet and held it up, grinning. ‘Aha.’

  As she had so many times before, she watched him roll on the sheath, breathless with excitement for the pleasure to come.

  He joined her on the bed and stretched out over her, searching her eyes hungrily at first before taking her lips in a slow tender kiss.

  When he drew back she gazed up at him, feeling the fever force thrumming in his virile body, enjoying the familiar, evocative scent of him, the erotic rub of his body hair on her breasts and legs. Precious flesh on flesh, beloved bone on bone. Familiar knee, familiar hip. The old sensation that their bodies had been fashioned to fit.

  He gazed at her, frowning, his eyes all at once serious. He said, a curious roughness in his deep voice, ‘I can’t get over how everything about you is still—with me. You’re engrained in my senses.’

  Her heart thrilled to hear her sensations reflected.

  He added even more hoarsely, his eyes glowing with a fierce sincerity, ‘I’m still wild for you. Whatever they told you, that never ended.’

  His face contorted with some strong emotion, then his eyes burned with a particular primitive purpose and she tensed with expectation. She wrapped her legs around him and with a strong sure thrust he drove into her.

  She let out a gasp, having forgotten how fabulously he filled her with his thick, hard length.

  He scanned her face with a mesmeric, heavy-lidded gaze. ‘I want to rock you until you forget every other guy in the universe.’

  Breathlessly she gasped, ‘What other guys?’

  He started to move inside her, rocking her in a subtle, sinuous, sexy rhythm that ignited little streamlets of pleasure inside her moist, empty darkness like rays of light. He took her mouth in urgent possession, then as the rhythm grew faster and harder, and his thrusting rod stroked her aroused inner walls, she felt herself open to him. Felt the light expand as their bodies fitted, locked tight in the sexy, satisfying rumba.

  She clung to her old lover as if to a lifeline, revelling in the power of him, the erotic friction with his strong chest. At first he watched her face, reading her responses, but as the tempo quickened his eyes closed and she knew he’d been overtaken by his own blissful concentration.

  With each escalating thrust her pleasure soared, rising higher and higher up some steep tense slope and she was on a wild high ride to ecstasy.

  She felt herself reach the summit, saw his neck sinews ridge with effort as he held back his climax to wait for her. Then just as she teetered on the edge she felt his powerful frame tense for the first spasm of climax. Somehow that violent tension fuelled her own with all the impetus she needed, and her suspense fractured and dissolved into a million exquisite shards and irradiated her entire body.

  Afterwards, after she’d recovered her breath and the blood had ceased drumming in her ears, when the sweat had dried on her skin and she was free of her corselet, she turned to examine him.

  He’d been up and washed, and now lay with his eyes closed, apparently dozing. The room was bathed in the soft light that preceded dusk.

  ‘You haven’t lost your touch,’ she murmured.

  She saw the edges of his mouth twitch. ‘I know. I was inspired.’

  She grinned. ‘Still so charmingly modest.’

  ‘Thank you.’ His eyes opened and he reached out and touched her. ‘You inspired me.’

  ‘Oh. Good. I hoped I was having an effect.’

  ‘When didn’t you?’ He leaned towards her and kissed her lips.

  That reminded her of something he’d said before about never changing, but of course he’d declared it in the heat of the moment. People often said things then. Before their brains cooled.

  Still, there was a thrilling atmosphere of togetherness winding around them. He pulled her closer to him and she lay silently, pleasantly entwined, savouring the precious intimacy of afterglow, wishing it would never end.

  He’d closed his eyes again, but she could tell his brain was ticking over.

  ‘Do you still write the poems?’ she said after a while, softly tracing the outline of his tattoo.

  ‘Nope.’ He smiled. ‘Sometimes I think of things I might write down, and then something intervenes. You know, work… I’m surprised you remember.’

  ‘I’m starting to remember quite a lot.’

  His lips twitched. ‘Not too much, I hope.’ Then after a while he opened his eyes and said cautiously, ‘Did you ever wish we hadn’t ended when we did?’

  She stilled, then disentangled herself from him and lay back on her pillow, her heart thumping ridiculously, considering it had all happened ten years ago. ‘Did you?’

  ‘I guess. Though at the time it seemed—for the best.’

  A million questions jostled for answers, not least the ones beginning with ‘why’ if this idle conversation was intended to convey how much he regretted their crash and burn. Still, she knew how to play the caution card too. In fact, it was the only one she ever dared use these days.

  ‘Who for?’ she said, as casual as he, while underneath her façade her adolescent heart was bursting through the layers to demonstrate that all along it had been ticking away alive and well, nursing all its old unresolved violence, just waiting for a trigger, a chance to spill its guts.

  His blue eyes met hers, intent, earnest, held them an intense, throat-catching instant, then veiled and slid away.

  ‘Ah…probably both of us,’ he said gruffly, retreating onto his pillow. ‘It wasn’t the sort of dependence either of us
could afford at that age, was it?’

  Spoken like a chief executive officer.

  She couldn’t resist some gentle mockery, unable to betray her savage soul altogether. ‘You mean there was too much emotion involved? Too much passion?’

  He crooked his arm over his eyes while her words floated on the air. After what seemed like for ever, he stirred himself to lean up on his elbow and gaze down at her, pure and thrilling sin brimming from his smiling eyes.

  ‘I think we both know there can never be too much passion.’ He reached for her and kissed her swollen lips with the same passionate fervour as the first time.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT WAS absurd to hold a grudge, and, truly, those painful emotions had long since cooled. She was an adult now, fast approaching the era of life when her womanly powers would be at their height, so if a man was fun and exciting, charming, wicked and a virile, sensitive lover who could send her over the edge, how crazy would she be to hold it against him that he’d once let her down?

  So long as she kept her head and didn’t harbour any destructive yearnings for a long-term arrangement, she could enjoy the current fling and walk away with a satisfied grin.

  Surely.

  So when the plane cruised her over the Alps and into Nice, with a night of the most fantastic and voluptuous love-making still warming her spirit she had nothing to complain of. Unless she counted a slight tenderness in certain delicate areas and a pressing need to sleep. Pity there was a day of conferencing to get through first.

  To her surprise they were met at the airport by a uniformed man in a cap marked Hotel Metropole, who bowed. ‘Mam’selle et monsieur, your ’elicopter awaits you.’

  ‘Our helicopter?’ she exclaimed to Joe. ‘From here into the city?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t I mention it? The conference is in Monte Carlo. Merci,’ he said to the pilot, launching into a stream of fluent French in response to something the man said.

  Monte Carlo. Well, one exotic location was as good as another, and who was she to quibble if he didn’t inform her of absolutely every minute detail?

  And, truly, she’d never experienced anything like that helicopter flight. It was her first time, and gazing down into the dazzling Mediterranean as it foamed up on the shores of a million little bays and inlets was a stunning experience. Marinas thronging with yachts and fishing boats, heart-stopping little villages perched on hillsides, spilling down cliff-faces… Image after charming image unfolded, etching themselves into her thrilled heart for all eternity. And Monte Carlo itself was a fairy tale. Spilling over the hillsides, the pale pink and cream sandstone city descended to a harbour marina where vessels were packed like sardines. A little further out some of the big glossy cruising yachts rode at anchor on the waves.

  ‘You see that chateau on the edge of the sea?’ their pilot enthused. ‘There is our famous Monte Carlo casino. And here we go down.’

  The pretty houses, the turquoise sea… Every view from every angle was breathtaking. How could Joe not be swept away?

  He wasn’t, though, she could tell when the fantastic ride was over and they strolled into the sumptuous lobby of the Metropole. While she glanced excitedly around her at what looked like a palace, taking in the rich furnishings, the tapestries, the elegant clientele chatting over their coffees, Joe was frowning, the grim lines around his eyes and mouth a reminder of their sleepless night.

  ‘Why didn’t you mention the helicopter and Monte Carlo?’ she murmured while they were waiting for the desk clerk to attend to them.

  ‘Maybe I don’t care for the name.’

  She gave him a sharp look and Joe felt a slight twinge of guilt. He supposed he had been less than forthcoming with her about the details of the trip.

  ‘Oh, well.’ He spread his hands. ‘I said the south of France. There’s hardly a great difference.’

  ‘Tell that to the Monacons.’

  ‘The Monegasque,’ he corrected gently. ‘Or the Monacoians.’

  He could hardly blame her feeling ruffled, but the truth was the very name Monte Carlo had an unpleasant ring to him. It conjured up visions of hungry, desperate people poring over roulette wheels. Lost souls with empty eyes and wallets, risking their children’s bread on the ride of a pitiless dice. Besides, the place was far too close to Antibes.

  Now he was here on the spot, Antibes loomed like a black cloud. With a resurgence of that dread feeling in his gut he tried to remember why he’d allowed himself to be pressured into coming. Why hadn’t he just ticked all the boxes and given the casino project the go-ahead? Did he seriously think he’d learn anything here he could use?

  His vision—the one where he produced some incontrovertible evidence that changed the minds of his directors—started to look like what it was. An hallucination.

  The truth was those guys were all salivating over the potential for obscene profits. Unless he could come up with an angle to quell their greed, they’d never listen.

  ‘Joe.’ He felt her tug at his sleeve. ‘Which conference is ours?’

  The moment of truth. Bracing for trouble, he followed Mirandi’s gaze to a placard where the hotel’s current conferences had been listed in both French and English.

  International Bankers Symposium

  Casino Acquisition and Marketing

  Capital Investors Roundtable

  Though his shirt collar all at once seemed to tighten around his neck like a noose, he met her gaze without flinching. ‘The second.’

  ‘Casinos? But…’

  ‘But what?’

  Wariness veiled her gaze, though he really hadn’t intended that little snap in his voice.

  ‘Well…’ She gazed steadily at him. ‘I guess when you mentioned entertainment for some reason I thought you meant the music industry.’

  ‘Hardly.’ He saw her brows edge together and it made his nerves jangle. ‘Is there something you want to say?’

  The atmosphere grew prickly. She evaded his eyes and he felt his blood pressure jump a notch. He tried to guess what she was thinking. Remembering his father, the fatal addiction? How could Joe betray his father’s suffering like that? Or even worse. Was Joe the same as his father?

  She glanced around her, extended her hands in wordless acquiescence. ‘We’re here, aren’t we? Would anything I say make a difference?’

  Irritation grabbed him. ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Then I’ll save my breath.’

  She flashed him a grin to show there were no hard feelings. But he could feel her slip him one or two shrewd glances. She was thinking plenty, he’d be willing to stake his last dollar on it—if he’d been a gambling man, of course, which he certainly was not. He could almost hear the moral judgements ticking over inside her glossy head.

  Although she gave no sign of it, considering she was smiling at the desk clerk, making chit-chat with her usual serenity. Perhaps he’d misread her. Paradoxically then he regretted cutting off her queries and wished he knew exactly what she was thinking. One thing he could always rely on in the past was her ability to see right into the heart of an issue. ‘Your keys, mam’selle et monsieur,’ the desk clerk beamed, only too eager to assist the mademoiselle. ‘Your baggage has already been transported to your rooms.’

  Mirandi thanked him. Conscious of a need to bridge the jagged chasm suddenly yawning between her and Joe, she turned to him. ‘Coffee first?’ She indicated the sign pointing outside to the pool bar and café, but he glanced at his watch, frowning.

  ‘Not if we want to unpack before we register for the conference. Don’t you want to change?’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ Her heart sank. So soon? After that delightful helicopter ride, switching straight back into work mode felt something of an anticlimax, but Joe’s demeanour didn’t encourage rebellion.

  She wished the conference was about the music industry. She wasn’t sure she could bear sitting through days of discussing something that clashed with her own values and upbringing in every way. As for Joe… How could he eve
n contemplate it?

  The mood had changed. Didn’t last night and the things they’d said to each other—those thrilling half-promises, all the demonstrations of rapture in each others’ company—didn’t they mean anything?

  The upper reaches of the hotel were decorated in the same luxurious style as the vestibule, with lovely antique table lamps and paintings in unexpected corners. Whether by accident or design they’d been assigned adjoining rooms. When she reached her door she arranged to meet Joe in thirty minutes, then walked inside, frowning.

  Something was wrong. She considered all the casual references Joe had made to the trip. The things he’d said in Zurich. This bloody hell of a trip.

  Maybe it wasn’t the place that was bothering him at all. Maybe it was the conference itself. She guessed that would explain his reluctance to discuss it with her.

  Although what was a conference, anyway—a few meetings, a lot of discussion? Despite the topic, it was hardly something to dread. He could walk away in a minute, but he had the look of a man about to undertake some gruelling trial. Was there someone he expected to meet there he didn’t want to see? Some old flame?

  He had plenty of them, she thought gloomily. It wasn’t hard to imagine they might pepper the world. Maybe that would explain his reluctance to share any information with her. Although…

  Looking back, she realised he hadn’t even been willing to tell her the theme of the conference. That hadn’t just been an oversight, she could tell by the tension in his tone downstairs. Face it, it was such an amazing theme for Joe of all people to be exploring. Casinos, of all things.

  The more she thought of it, the stranger it felt. Whoever he was now, she knew the Joe he’d been and where he’d come from. One thing she remembered all too clearly was his dislike of casinos and all their implications.

  And it was understandable, for him. He might not have been brought up as she had by a tough church minister with a tender social conscience, but as a teenager he’d been dealt one of life’s cruellest blows.