by Maggie Cox
‘No wonder you were frightened.’ There was a slight break in his voice as his hand lifted to brush away some soft dark hair that had drifted across her cheekbone. ‘You had a right to be. You were just a child, Maya.’
Her lip visibly trembled. Then her stunning eyes filled with tears. ‘Don’t do that!’
‘Do what?’
‘Be so understanding and…and say nice things to me. Kindness is the hardest thing to cope with of all. Better that you just tell me to forget about the past and concentrate on the present. Isn’t that what people say?’ Anguished, her beautiful emerald gaze latched a little desperately onto his. ‘Trouble is…sometimes I can’t forget about the past. I feel like I’m still waiting for him to come back, you know? Still waiting for him to walk through that door and say all the things I longed for him to say to me when I was a little girl…most of all to tell me that everything would be all right…even if it was a lie. But of course he won’t come back, will he? He even took his own life to get away from me!’
‘Is that what you believe? My God, Maya, that’s got to be a million miles from the truth!’
‘Is it? How do you know?’
‘Because people aren’t in their right minds when they take their own life. They’re so locked in their pain that they can’t see any other way of escaping it. That’s the only reason they would make such a dreadful decision. It’s nobody’s fault, and you definitely shouldn’t be blaming yourself for what happened. I also know that you absolutely deserve people to be kind to you…to treat you well. Your father was ill and needed help. Maybe right now what you need is a little help and kindness too?’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. People’s help or kindness usually comes with a price attached, I’ve found. Frankly I’d rather fend for myself.’ She tried to twist away from him, but Blaise held her fast, forcing her to look at him.
‘I don’t believe you.’
In a heartbeat, his lips were on hers. No thinking, no planning, no intent to seduce…He merely acted on pure primal instinct and a genuine need to provide solace to the woman in his arms in whatever way he could. But once he’d laid his lips against hers, and her mouth had opened to him as easily and effortlessly as a flower opening its petals to the sun, a fire caught hold of him—a rampaging torrent of want, need and desire that was like a forceful, unstoppable river…
His arms wound tightly about her, Blaise was kissing her as if he was drunk on the taste of her and it was utterly blissful. Just as Maya had always guessed it would be. She had no reservations about kissing him back either. In a state of heightened emotion already, she knew her blood was pounding with the kind of carnal heat that she’d read about in books and passionate poetry but had no personal experience of. Her hands moved urgently down over his hard, fit body, pushing at the black fine wool sweater he wore, touching the warm, taut flesh of his ribcage and stomach underneath, aching to explore even more of him.
He too was impatient with her clothing, and he lifted the silky top that clung to her body, moving the sensuous material urgently up over her lacy black bra, kneading her breasts through the flimsy cups, teasing her burgeoning nipples with rough, warm fingers and making her want to plead with him for more of the same exquisite treatment with no end in sight.
When his hands travelled down to her hips, to impel her hard against him, she came into contact with the full dizzying strength of his desire. It strained hard against the fly of his jeans and left Maya in no doubt that he was as turned on as she was. With a hungry little groan she moulded his taut firm behind through the black denim he had on, a sudden wild need driving her to have him possess her…now. She didn’t want to wait. The desperate demand of her body to have him void the ache inside her in the most primeval way was too great for either conscience or patience to play any part in at all, yet somewhere in her mind she knew it was dangerously crazy as well.
But gradually, bit by devastating bit, Blaise made the decision to call a halt to the madness and broke off their passionate kiss. He lifted his head to study her. His blue eyes reflected back a hot, restless sea of need and desire that easily matched her own as they ruefully met hers.
‘Lottie is expecting us down for dinner, and I can’t do anything to delay that right now, but I don’t want to leave you in a state of wanting either. Why don’t you lie on the bed for me?’
Dazed by his mellifluous voice and that tantalising instruction, Maya tugged her top back down over her bra. ‘What—what for?’
‘Maya…do you really need to ask?’
Eyeing him nervously, Maya found herself doing as he’d asked her—just as if her body made its own decisions without even consulting her mind. Turning her head, she watched him move across to the lamp beside her bed like a fluid ebony shadow—the only relief his dark gold hair—and switch it on. Then he flicked another switch and the main light went off. Her very ribs aching with the tension that was building inside her, she forced herself to try and relax even as the room was bathed in a soft, intimate glow.
Returning, Blaise slipped off her shoes—and even the touch of his hands at her bare ankles sent hot darts of torrid pleasure bolting almost violently through her. Then, crouching down by the bed in front of her, he eased her long legs towards him. In another fluid, commanding motion he moved upwards to undo her zip, tugging her black silk trousers down over her hips and legs in a rustle of sensuous silk before discarding them onto the bed.
Her breath catching in her throat, Maya leaned forward to see what he would do next. Never had her heart beat with such clamouring, urgent need—and it had to be said fear too. This was simply out of her remit. To be so vulnerable with a man again was like cracking open a fissure in her heart that had not yet healed. It would all end in tears…she knew that. But it was with devastating intent that Blaise met and held her enraptured gaze. In response, her skin prickled hotly, as though a thousand tropical winds were blowing over her and through her. She was hardly conscious of breathing as he hooked his thumbs beneath the black lace sides of her panties and then, with a firm downward tug, deftly removed them too.
Biting her lip, she lay back on the bed, her body trembling so hard that she physically hurt. With the tight, coiled feeling inside her hitting an impossible ceiling, she knew she was on the brink of climaxing already because of Blaise’s sensual attentions.
It wouldn’t take much to tip her over the edge, she realised.
‘Try to relax…trust me. I’m going to give you just what you need…I promise…’ His voice flowed over her like warm, luscious honey in the most seductively hypnotic tone she’d ever heard.
Telling herself she was only fulfilling a very basic need—a need she’d long denied herself with a man—Maya shut her eyes. Almost instantly she opened them again. Shock and dizzying hot pleasure poured through her in a volcanic rush as his velvet tongue laved at the soft exquisitely sensitive folds at her centre, across the aching bud there, and then thrust commandingly inside her.
Maya hardly knew how she stayed on the bed the pleasure was so intense. All she could do was gasp and moan out loud, her fingers clutching desperately for purchase into the luxurious silk counterpane, her body helplessly writhing as Blaise’s thrusts became more and more purposeful. And then she couldn’t hold back any longer. An ecstatic cry left her throat as she convulsed with the power of her climax, and still he tormented and thrilled her with that erotic tongue of his—holding her slender thighs firmly apart until she writhed and convulsed no more.
All but exhausted by the ecstatic release he had helped her attain, Maya slowly returned to the world and dazedly sat up. Quite aware of how wild and wanton she must appear, with her long hair falling in a tousled silken mass round her shoulders and the lower half of her body bare and exposed, she self-consciously drew her knees together, feeling her sense of vulnerability magnify. It was the most vulnerable and exposed she had ever felt with a man, and her anxiety at what she’d dared let him do flowed over her, almost stealing every bit of the wild,
unfettered pleasure she’d just enjoyed.
If she knew herself to appear wanton, then Blaise looked downright lascivious as he got to his feet. Leaning over her, he tilted her face towards him and delivered a most knowing masculine grin.
‘That was just for starters,’ he teased, then gently moved the pads of his fingers downwards over her cheeks, where the damp trails of her tears still glistened. ‘I wanted to help you forget the past and come back to the present.’
‘You—you certainly did that.’ One corner of her mouth somehow quirked upwards in a smile that, given what she’d just allowed him to do, was ridiculously shy.
‘We’ll continue where we left off later. I want you in my bed tonight, Maya…In fact the truth is I want you anywhere I can have you.’
Without hesitation she touched his smoothly shaven jaw, forcing her anxiety away and for once bravely meeting the burning gaze that surveyed her without withdrawing, ‘I want that too,’ she answered softly, and this time it was Blaise’s audible intake of breath that feathered over her…
Neither of them was able to do full justice to the beautiful dinner Lottie had prepared. Not when a different sort of hunger was gnawing at them instead. With the candlelight glowing between them on the polished dining table, even conversation seemed extraneous. When Blaise asked her to pass him one of the condiments in its antique silver container Maya reacted just as if he’d just asked her to peel off her clothes and lie naked on the table. Her skin burned where his fingers inadvertently brushed against hers, and when she glanced up into his eyes he was studying her so fervently that her breath was suspended for a couple of moments.
‘What is it?’ she whispered.
‘I want to know how long it’s been since you’ve been with someone,’ he replied.
‘I haven’t been with anybody for at least two years.’ Troubled, she blushed hard at the idea that he might believe her to be promiscuous in any way. After all, she’d just allowed him the most intimate access to her body—more intimate than she’d ever let any other man come close to getting.
‘Was it a long relationship?’
Thinking about Sean Rivers was not something Maya liked to do very often. Even now she shuddered at how bitterly their liaison had ended. ‘It lasted about six months, so…not very long at all.’
‘Why did it end?’
‘Because I trusted him a bit too much and he threw my trust right back in my face.’
‘Oh?’
‘Something happened.’ She took a small sip of wine, the alcohol bolstering her courage. ‘His name was Sean, and for a while I thought I was in love with him…thought that he loved me too. He was the first man I’d ever met who made me think our relationship could go somewhere. When we were together he—he was tender, kind, caring. We’d talk and talk for hours, on every subject under the sun…even about becoming engaged.’
Maya’s glance was far away for a moment as memories of that liaison came flooding back. ‘He was all the things I thought I’d ever wanted in a man. Then one day I received a text from him…an intimate, private message—the sort of thing that a man sends to the woman he loves. Only it wasn’t for me…he’d sent it to me accidentally. That was the day I discovered he was having an affair with somebody else.’
Swallowing hard at the aching memory of yet again being betrayed by someone she’d trusted, Maya reached up to curl a few silken black strands of hair behind her ear. ‘My friends said I should have seen the signs. But people also say that love makes you blind, don’t they? Anyway, I didn’t see them—the signs, I mean. I stupidly believed everything he said and I paid for it. I rang him straight away and told him I never wanted to see him again. I didn’t. Clearly the other woman meant much more to him than I did.’
‘That’s tough. I’m sorry you had to find out the truth in such a crass way,’ Blaise commented thoughtfully, slowly twisting the stem of his crystal wine glass between long fingers as he regarded her. ‘But better that you found out his true character sooner rather than later.’
‘And what about you as far as relationships are concerned?’ Maya dared, watching how the candlelight cast some of his amazing sculpted features into shadow and the others into mesmerising relief—including the sexy little dimple that cleaved into his chin. Sensing that guard of his descend almost immediately, she half expected him not to tell her, and she couldn’t help but feel a little crushed that he would withhold such information after what she’d just revealed about her ex.
A sickening fear arose inside that he would turn out to be some kind of international playboy, with a woman in every port, and that he would break her heart. But what if she could steel her heart against full-blooded involvement with Blaise? What if she could accept a short-term affair instead? An affair with no expectations on her part other than more of the scalding passion she had enjoyed earlier? What then?
‘My most enduring relationship has always been with my work,’ he answered, with not a small touch of his trademark irony in his tone. Before continuing he drained the rest of the shimmering ruby wine in his glass. ‘I’ve always adored women…but as yet I’ve never found one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.’
‘Did you even want to?’ Maya questioned unhappily, suddenly knowing that, for Blaise, the notion of happy ever after with a woman he adored was probably not even on the agenda, if the truth be known. Now she considered again the possibility that he was one of those men who liked to play the field, to have his cake and eat it, as the old saying went.
And why wouldn’t he when he moved in the kind of circles where beautiful available women must be ten a penny? The small corner of Maya’s heart that had started to blossom beneath his kind words and sexy attention started to close up again—like a flower denied sunlight—and the sensation of an icy breeze rippled through her instead…even though she’d already tried to resign herself to a brief affair with him.
Sensing the downturn in her mood, Blaise smiled coaxingly at her. ‘Come on, Maya. Let’s not spoil this thing we have between us already.’ Frustration edged his tone.
‘Oh?’ she pushed to her feet, too upset to stay sitting. ‘And what is this “thing” we have between us, exactly…recreational sex? Of course…how could I forget?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE’D left the table before Blaise could fully register the fact.
‘Damn!’ What had he said to make her act so unreasonably? He didn’t like the way he was suddenly feeling: as if he were one of those despicable men that had jerked her around—and he included her tragic father in that list. He’d been perfectly up-front from the start, hadn’t he? Even though he’d offered her the job as his temporary research assistant he’d made it crystal-clear that he desired her too, so what was she getting upset about? Covering his face with his hands, Blaise swore softly.
Minutes later, he found himself standing outside Maya’s bedroom for the second time that evening. As he rapped on the door, he was genuinely shocked at what a heightened state of emotion he was in. Not since he was a child, witnessing that first terrible row where his father had hit his mother across the face, had he felt so affected. God! What was the matter with him? He’d become expert over the years at disguising his feelings, and sometimes wondered if he hadn’t done too good a job. Most of the women he’d had relationships with had all but despaired that he was even capable of experiencing emotion, yet here he was, turned every which way imaginable because of the woman whose room he now waited outside.
‘I’m sorry I stormed off like that.’ The door opened and there she stood.
‘I somehow think maybe I owe you an apology too.’ But even as the words left Blaise’s lips confusion bolted through him…confusion and arousal. Dressed only in a short striped nightshirt, her feet and long legs bare and the neckline of the shirt opened provocatively low enough for him to easily glimpse the sexy, tantalising curve of those voluptuous breasts, Maya stared steadily back at him. His reaction was inevitable. He hardened instantly, as though a sear
ing torch of flaming heat had glanced against his loins.
‘What’s all this about?’ he asked huskily, marvelling that he was able to speak at all when he was confronted by what was probably the most alluring sight even his fertile imagination could devise.
‘I thought you were meant to be clever? You write all these amazing plays about the human condition, and you can’t work out why I’m standing here dressed like this? I’ve been waiting for you, Blaise. If you want to have an affair with me then I’ve decided that’s exactly what I want too. I promise you I’ll have no expectations other than that.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yes. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? After all…we’re both grown-ups here, aren’t we?’
Her cheeks turned visibly pink as she made this declaration but, gazing into her hypnotic dark-lashed emerald eyes, Blaise could see that though a part of her might be mad at him for clearly not wanting anything more than an affair with her she was still equally as aroused as he was. Stepping over the threshold into the room, the intimate space lit only by that same diaphanous glow that had lit it earlier, he knew his hungry glance devoured her. Devoured her like no tempting dessert he’d ever sampled.
Taking a long, slow breath, he remarked carefully, ‘Never mind what I want. I’m moving no further from this spot unless I know for sure that this is absolutely what you want too, Maya.’
‘It is. It is what I want. I’ve told you already, haven’t I?’