Blackmailed by the Vengeful Tycoon

by Penny Jordan

  ‘I should want it yes,’ Drake agreed equably, ‘but only if that was what she wanted too.’

  ‘And yet Emma’s given up her television career,’ David broke in glancing half triumphantly at Drake.

  Emma was conscious of three pairs of eyes all focused on her. Drake’s responses to David’s questions had caused her both pleasure and pain. Pleasure that he could be generous and open-minded enough to give the woman he loved the freedom to make her own choices in life, and pain because she would never be that woman.

  Of the three of them only Drake knew the real reason why she had given up her television career, but if she was Drake’s wife would she have wanted to continue with it? Facing the question honestly Emma spoke slowly. ‘I have to admit that I’m pulled two ways. Half of me would want to devote my time to my husband and family and yet the sense of self-worth one gets from succeeding in something outside that small world can be very important. Perhaps I’ll be one of those women who return to a career once the children are teenagers.’

  ‘I hope not.’ Drake’s firm denial startled her. She looked at him with unguarded eyes for a moment, quickly turning away when she realised what she might be betraying.

  ‘Emma has an excellent brain which I would hate to see atrophy,’ Drake spoke succinctly. ‘I would very much like to persuade her to work alongside me as my assistant. It can be hellish lonely and vulnerable at the top of a large corporation; and there’s nothing like sharing that burden with the person closest to you.’

  ‘Oh I’ve never believed that a married couple can work together successfully,’ David said stuffily.

  Emma wasn’t really listening to him. She was fighting against a growing tide of emotional havoc. Did Drake really not know what he was doing to her when he talked so evocatively of a future she knew they would not share? How could he know, she reminded herself; she had taken good care to make sure that her love remained a secret from him. More and more she admired and respected him; she liked him as a person; a fellow human being; as well as loving him as a man. It was a combination that would be pretty hard to beat; maybe even impossible. She stared moodily at her half finished meal, startled to tense irritation when David exclaimed, ‘My goodness Emma, that’s your third glass of wine. No point in asking you if you want a brandy. What’s got into you? You’re normally very abstemious?’

  ‘Well perhaps tonight I feel like leaping out of my rut,’ Emma told him curtly. She did feel quite light headed; more because she had not been eating properly for the last few weeks than because she had consumed three glasses of wine, but it irritated her to be treated like a child and by David of all people, ‘and I should like a brandy,’ she added, ‘a large one.’

  By the time they were saying their goodbyes to Camilla and David, Emma was beginning to regret her bravado. She felt distinctly light-headed and wobbly, and she had not had an opportunity to question Camilla further about David’s reaction to Drake. In fact as they left she had the distinct impression that Camilla was out of charity with them both, which was ridiculous when they were the ones doing her the favour.

  She said as much to Drake as they walked towards his car, and was surprised by the small grin of amusement he gave her, but she felt too muzzy-headed to question it.

  Once she was in her seat with the belt fastened she leaned back and closed her eyes, wishing the earth would not spin in quite such a violent manner.

  It was some time later when she opened them, totally disorientated by the thick darkness outside.

  ‘Where are we?’ As she asked the question she glanced at her watch and frowned. They had been driving for just over two hours.

  ‘Drake where are we?’ she persisted, when he said nothing. ‘We’ve been travelling for over two hours.’

  ‘I’m taking you home with me,’ Drake told her calmly, ‘I want to talk to you.’

  His cool manipulation of events stunned her, rendering her almost speechless. ‘But I don’t want to go home with you,’ she managed at last, the alcoholic affects clearing fast as she tried to come to grips with what he was saying.

  ‘Too bad,’ he responded laconically, ‘because you don’t have much choice.’

  He was right there, Emma reflected mentally, subsiding back into her seat. And what on earth did he want to talk to her about so urgently that it required this draconian action? Perhaps he wanted to offer her a job? The thought ran through her mind as she remembered the dinner table conversation, but why should Drake offer her a job? Perhaps he was still hoping to persuade her into an affair with him? But why should he do that now when he had been content to ignore her for over three weeks?

  Emma was still trying to solve that puzzle when Drake drove into a narrow turning. Gravel crunched beneath the car tyres; the dark shapes of bushes lining the drive. He stopped the car in front of a floodlit Tudor farmhouse of rambling proportions, and said drily, ‘Home sweet home—out you get Emma. Or would you prefer me to carry you?’

  ‘I can walk.’ She managed to inject a certain dignity into her voice, but it was something she was far from feeling. The thought of him touching her body made her shiver with mingled pleasure and dread. Idiot, she derided herself; he doesn’t love you; you know that; stop tormenting yourself.

  His choice of home half surprised her. She would have expected something more regal and impressive. This half timber, rambling black and white building looked comfortable and welcoming. It wasn’t hard to picture it filled with children and dogs. This impression was reinforced when she stepped into the attractive irregular-shaped hallway. The walls glowed soft cream, the exposed beams mellow and dark.

  ‘Please go into the study and make yourself at home,’ Drake told her. ‘I just want to go upstairs and change. Dinner suits aren’t my favourite clothes.’ He grimaced faintly as he spoke, tugging impatiently at his bow tie. Emma felt weak with the longing to go up to him and press her lips against his skin. but she managed to suppress it long enough to stumble blindly through the open door he had indicated.

  His study was lined with bookshelves; a comfortable, masculine room slightly untidy and obviously well used.

  Too tense to sit down she was studying book titles idly when she heard a sharp brief cry. Instantly alarm tingled through her body. She waited to see if the sound was repeated and when everything remained silent she walked back into the hall and called out tentatively, ‘Drake, are you all right?’

  There was no answer, and reasoning that he must not have heard her Emma called again. Still there was no response. Now a primitive deep rooted anxiety spread through her body, enmeshing and immobilising her reason with pure fear. What had happened to Drake?

  Before she knew what she was doing Emma was hurrying upstairs. When she reached the landing she stared about herself, her eyes finally alighting on an open door.

  ‘Drake?’ She walked through it tentatively, her throat so tight that her voice was little more than a croaky whisper.

  Drake was sitting on a large bed, minus his shirt, the room smelled sharply of masculine cologne.

  ‘I knocked it off the dresser,’ he told her briefly and it soaked my shirt. God,’ he grimaced slightly, ‘This room reeks of it.’

  ‘I think it’s quite pleasant.’ Emma spoke automatically, all her senses too intent on registering the magnificence of Drake’s naked torso, to concentrate on mere speech.

  ‘Do you?’ He got up and came towards her reaching her before Emma had time to think properly.

  ‘Heaven help me Emma, but I want you.’ His voice was thick, slurred almost, as though he had been the one drinking and not her. His fingers punished the feminine sensitivity of her upper arms, the heat coming off his bare skin engulfing her in a tide of sexual awareness that drowned out every other emotion.

  ‘Emma!’ He groaned her name, his hands sliding down to her wrists, pinning them behind her back as he bent his head and touched his tongue tentatively against her lips.

  Emma tried to strangle an involuntary moan of pleasure that rose
to her lips, but they were already parting traitorously, eagerly seeking the tormenting exploration of Drake’s tongue.

  Time and reality both ceased to exist. They were simply two people bound up in the same spell; bound by a need so intense that no mere human will-power could overset it.

  Emma wasn’t aware of Drake sliding the clothes from her body; only the delirious relief of feeling his skin against her own as he lifted her on to the bed and joined her there.

  ‘Emma. God you’re so beautiful. So perfectly female. I thought I remembered every single thing about you,’ Drake muttered rawly, bending over her to stroke long fingers over the curved outline of her body. ‘I thought I’d committed every last detail irrevocably to memory, but memories are nothing—starlight to the strength of the sun—when you compare them to the real thing.’

  ‘Starlight is kinder,’ Emma responded, the words hard to utter as her senses responded passionately to the intensity with which he was studying her.

  ‘Perhaps in that its failure to mimic the sun helps us to forget what we’ve lost. My memories didn’t do you justice Emma. Nothing could recreate the special silky smoothness of your skin; the way you tremble when I touch you; the way your body responds to mine.’

  His mouth silenced the response she would have made, the fierce intensity of his kiss obliterating any ability to think. As she slid her arms round his neck and encountered the male heat of his skin Emma knew she was lost; drowning in water so deep that it was pointless to even think of fighting against its insidious pull.

  The lightest brush of his fingers against her skin set off explosive bursts of pleasure so intense that they shook her body, causing Drake to mutter thick words of encouragement and praise as he witnessed her response to his caresses.

  Need, anguish, love; all became one fierce torrent of emotion that would not be denied. Her fevered response to him seemed to have a cataclysmic effect on Drake. His mouth burned against her skin; fierce in its possession, the boundaries of his self-control dissolving in the heat of their mutual need.

  When Emma arched instinctively beneath him he cried out her name; the male thrust of his body against and within her own so deeply welcomed by her senses that Emma could not conceive how she had existed without him.

  Her body starved of his touch and proximity; incited and seduced, betraying instincts Emma hadn’t known she possessed. The first time they had made love there had been pleasure it was true, but this… this total giving of herself… this heady power of knowing that Drake was as powerless to resist the lure of her body as she was his, seemed to unite them in a way that made them truly equal partners.

  ‘Emma!’ She felt Drake tense and tremble slightly against her, his eyes almost black, his skin so hot to the touch that it almost burned.

  ‘Emma, dear God, what you do to me.’ His body shuddered in release against hers, setting off explosive surges of pleasure that increased in volume until she was crying out his name, relishing the fierce drag of his teeth against her nipple.

  Later lying sated and relaxed in Drake’s arms it was too much of an effort to move; or to think about what she was doing. Her eyes closed and she curled instinctively into the warmth of Drake’s body.

  It was light when she woke up; knowing before she opened her eyes that something was wrong; but not knowing what it was. Her body felt pleasantly lethargic; she stretched automatically without opening her eyes, pushing back the bed clothes to uncurl her body with an instinctive sensuality.

  ‘You look exactly as a woman should when she’s well and truly been loved.’

  Drake’s voice jolted her back to instant reality, her body freezing tensely as she reached quickly for the covers. Drake stopped her, the knowledge of his proximity forcing her to open her eyes. Unshaven, he was dressed in a brief bathrobe, his eyes hard and unmerciful as they witnessed her embarrassment.

  ‘What’s the matter Emma?’ he taunted bitingly, ‘Had a sudden attack of conscience? Perhaps that man you’ve found, isn’t the right one after all,’ he derided. ‘To judge by the way you responded to me last night you haven’t found physical satisfaction with anyone else.’

  ‘And of course that’s all important,’ Emma lashed back at him, too confused and hurt by the knowledge that what had happened between them last night was to him, merely the satisfaction of a physical urge, to think about what she was saying.

  ‘It certainly helps,’ Drake agreed, ‘and don’t try telling me that this man you’ve found can fulfil you sexually Emma, your body tells me a different story. It was starving for me… for me!’ he underlined humiliatingly, ‘and don’t bother trying to deny it…’

  ‘I was tipsy,’ Emma muttered, turning away from him, desperate for any means of escape. Why oh why had she been betrayed into saying ‘Yes’ when he asked her if she had found a man whom she loved with her heart and her body? How long could she prevent him from realising just who that man was.

  ‘That’s my Emma.’ His voice was angry, his eyes hard and cold. ‘Make the facts fit her own preconceived ideas. You’re not still tipsy this morning I trust?’

  Emma shook her head, wanting only to escape from the bed and from him. ‘Good, then we’ll just put your little theory to the test shall we?’ he suggested calmly.

  As his meaning hit her she tried to squirm away but he was streets ahead of her, pinning her to the bed with one hand, while the other grasped her hair, forcing her to lie still. Just for a second she felt a tense spiral of fear convulse her body, but the moment Drake’s mouth covered her own it was gone, smothered in a long slow surge of pleasure. She tried to fight against it, arching her body, not in invitation but in angry rejection.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ Drake told her thickly, kneeling on the bed beside her, ‘I’m going to make you admit how good it is between us even if it takes me all day. In fact I hope it does,’ he added with raw emphasis, ‘because I’m going to enjoy every single second of it.’

  ‘Sex means nothing without love.’ Emma almost cried the words too wrought up by her body’s almost instant betrayal to use caution.

  ‘To you? I don’t believe that Emma.’ Drake’s mouth was wry as he studied her flushed face and angry eyes. ‘You enjoyed every minute of what we had together last night, but if your memory needs jogging…’

  The moment his fingers touched her skin Emma knew she was lost. The slow circles he drew round the aching peak of her breast were sheer torment, and although she tried her best to resist him, it was impossible not to move frenziedly against him, inviting the erotic possession of his mouth against her breasts, at first teasing and then arousing her to the point where her body ached tormentingly for the maleness of his.

  ‘Now tell me you don’t want me.’ His voice was thick, heavily slurred, his body as aroused as hers Emma recognised shiveringly when he lifted his head. ‘You want me, Emma.’

  ‘Not without love, Drake.’ She moved her head from side to side, fighting to deny her love for him and regain some sense of reality. ‘Please don’t make it harder for me than it already is?’

  ‘Harder for you?’ Drake swore violently, grasping her wrists and forcing her arms down beside her body. ‘Just how the hell do you think I feel, Emma?’ he demanded rawly. ‘You’re tearing my guts out. Believe me if there was some magic spell I could use to make you feel about me the way I feel about you, I’d move heaven and earth to find it. As it is… Well you can’t deny that sexually you’re responsive to me… Let me show you how good it could be for us Emma.’

  ‘And when you’re tired of me?’ Emma asked achingly. ‘I’m not like your other women, Drake, I just couldn’t take that.’

  ‘Tired of you?’ His voice betrayed an aching pain she had never thought to see in him. ‘Dear God, Emma don’t you know yet that that will never be. When first you demanded to see me I’ll admit I dismissed you without a second thought until it occurred to me that I could use you. And then I saw you—’ he smiled in self-derision. ‘I wanted you so badly it hurt. When you agre
ed to pose for the magazine I was glad; glad that you had a flaw. When I found out you’d turned down your job, I knew my first instincts had been right and that not only were you beautiful in body, you were also beautiful in mind and spirit. I had to see you again; to wipe the slate clean and start afresh, but I knew those photographs would always be between us, so I devised a way of blackmailing you into getting engaged to me. I thought if I put on enough pressure, worked hard enough at it, you’d be bound to…’

  ‘Give in?’ Emma supplied wryly. ‘Well I did.’

  ‘Yes,’ Drake agreed bitterly, ‘Have you any idea what it did to me when you thought we were really engaged; when you wanted me as I’d…’ He broke off and shook his head wearily. ‘I shouldn’t have made love to you that night; I knew it at the time and yet I literally couldn’t help myself.

  ‘Why won’t you give it a try, Emma? Let me prove to you that we can build something that will last on what we have.’

  Hiding her surprise Emma studied him. ‘I thought long lasting structures were something you made a point of avoiding,’ she remarked drily.

  ‘That was before I fell in love with you.’

  He said it so simply that for a moment she couldn’t speak, and then her opportunity to do so was gone as Drake continued urgently, ‘This other man Emma, whoever he is, I don’t believe you really love him. I know you. You’d never have responded to me the way you did if that were the case. I don’t know who he is but…’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Emma interrupted coolly, fighting down a rising tide of pure, intense joy, ‘you know him very well. It’s you Drake,’ she told him when he simply watched her. ‘I love you.’

  His instant withdrawal from her was not what she had expected. He half turned away from her as he said thickly, ‘Emma if this is some sort of act of pity, forget it. I can take the fact that you don’t love me, because I believe we can build a lasting marriage on what we have, but what I don’t want are false promises; false hopes.’