by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
He laughed quietly and kissed the corner of her mouth. ‘Transcendental. But you have nothing to compare it with.’
Hope’s confidence surged back. ‘Perhaps I should gain some experience,’ she suggested demurely, ‘so I can make comparisons.’
There was a moment’s silence before he drawled, ‘Perhaps you should. Let’s see what we can do, shall we?’
She’d thought nothing could top the sensations of their first lovemaking, but during that long night Keir showed her that there were infinite variations, infinite degrees of pleasure, infinite graduations of sexuality.
And when at last he left her, she lay rigid and desperate, clamping her eyes shut so that she couldn’t see the grey light of dawn.
Defiantly, deliberately, she’d opened the Pandora’s box of sexual awareness, but for her no hope lurked in the bottom. Keir was going to leave, and although she wouldn’t have it any other way, she’d miss him with every cell in her body.
The rain had long gone by the time the sun came up on a bleak day by Noosa standards, with a cool westerly polishing the sky to pallor; palms rustled and crackled under the wind’s sway as Hope walked to work. The cafés, usually full of people determined to squeeze every drop of pleasure from their holiday, were half empty.
She loved the little town, had fallen under its special spell of bush and sea and the exquisite beach, its brash, cheerful holiday ambience, and yet she thought, When I go I’ll never come here again.
Late in the morning Chloe muttered, ‘He’s back. And looking for you.’
Heart thumping in a complicated rhythm, Hope looked up. Yes, it was Keir, dressed in clothes that managed to be both casual and formal, his expression withdrawn, the pale eyes hooded. Grave-faced, she went to meet him.
‘I need to see you,’ he said quietly.
She glanced at her watch. ‘In half an hour?’
Unusually for him, he paused before saying, ‘All right.’
Half an hour later, outside the shop, he said, ‘Come up to my apartment.’
It was Hope’s turn to hesitate, but she could tell from his aloofness that he wasn’t planning a lovers’ tryst. Hollow and empty of emotion, she nodded and walked along the street with him.
His suite was like Noosa, chic and subtropical and sophisticated. Hope walked across to the window. Beyond Double Island to the north lay mysterious Fraser Island, and the long, lazy coastline of south Queensland, stretching in voluptuous gold, green and blue towards the tropics. On the vivid grass below a black and white bird paced across the lawn, twitching its tail feathers from side to side like a woman managing a train-encumbered evening gown.
Fixing her eyes on the flicking feathers, she said, ‘Fantastic view.’ Her voice sounded flat, mechanical.
‘I’m not talking to your back,’ Keir said, a steely thread of aggression in his voice.
Hope sat down in one of the elegant wicker chairs, crossed her ankles and folded her hands in her lap. Fixing her gaze on his shirt pocket, she willed herself to stay still, stay quiet.
He said, ‘I have to go to New York—there’s a problem, and people are depending on me. I’m booked to fly out in half an hour.’
She nodded. Silence, oppressive and thick, blanketed the room. Unable to resist, she flicked a glance upwards.
‘I’ll be back.’ Narrow, winter-coloured eyes searched hers.
Odd, she thought distantly, how easy it was to crack a heart. A one-night stand could do it. ‘When?’ Yes, that sounded all right—a bit remote, but normal.
He reached her before she could move, pulling her up from the chair with hands that wouldn’t be denied.
‘Running again, Hope?’ Eyes gleaming, he surveyed her face. Softly, silkily, he continued, ‘You beautiful, stubborn coward, you’re no more immune to me than I am to you. I don’t know how long it’ll take me to sort out this mess in New York—no more than a week at the most—and I’ll come back as soon as I can. And then we’ll talk. Just remember this—last night you gave yourself to me and I’m not going to let you run away again.’
Dimly surprised that she could still function, that the words emerged without a tremor, she said, ‘One night in my bed gives you no authority over me. I don’t like macho, overbearing men who think they have the right to order women’s lives for them.’
He frowned, half-closed eyes giving him an air of concentrated determination. Beneath the taut bronzed skin the autocratic framework intensified his emotion as he said evenly, ‘Do you want me to plead with you to stay?’
‘No!’ She reached out and touched his face, cupping his cheek. Her skin tingled at rough silk beneath her palm and her fingertips—a sizzle of electricity that transformed her anger into helpless, compulsive desire. ‘I’ll be here when you come back,’ she said quietly, making a decision she knew already was going to cost her pain.
Keir closed his eyes for a second. ‘I’m sorry. Not just for being stupid, but for setting off old alarm bells.’
He meant her father, but she didn’t have time to process this thought because he bent and kissed her, one hand snaking up to hold her head still. At first his mouth was gentle, and then the kiss transmuted, became hard, passionate, unsparing.
Arms looping his neck, Hope surrendered to the hunger he’d learned so well to arouse, giving him everything he asked for.
At last his head lifted and he surveyed her flushed face and amber eyes, dazed and heavy-lidded, the trembling, seeking mouth. A rough sound lifted his chest and he kissed her again with a hunted desperation that tore at her heart, only lifting his head at a discreet tap on the door.
‘That will be Aline,’ he said hoarsely, and let her go and strode across to the door.
Fiercely glad that he didn’t ask his colleague inside, Hope dragged in a shuddering breath and concentrated on staying upright as Keir and Aline held a rapid, low-voiced conversation in the hall.
At the sound of the door being jerked shut she said in a brittle voice, ‘I have to go; I said I’d be back as soon as I could.’
After a glance at his set, implacable expression, she summoned steel to her backbone and headed past him towards the door.
‘Hope.’
She shook her head, but he reached for her again, and again she couldn’t deny him. This kiss went on and on, fuelled by a deep, hungry need that intensified with each frustrating moment.
Eventually she wrenched her face sideways, breaking contact. ‘I do have to go,’ she whispered unsteadily.
‘So do I.’ But he didn’t release her. Tucking her head under his chin, he went on, ‘Wait for me to come back.’
There wasn’t anything he could ask for that she wouldn’t give.
‘I promise.’ Her voice sounded husky with longing, with conviction. Desperate, she pulled away.
This time he let her go and hauled a slim leather wallet from his pocket. Unfolding it, he flicked out a card, took a pen and scribbled something.
‘Here’s my home address and number,’ he said. ‘If you need me at all, ring. I might not be there, but whoever answers will know who you are and they’ll know how to contact me.’
Without looking at it, Hope took the card. ‘Don’t come down with me.’
After a glance at her face he said, ‘All right.’ Another knock on the door broke impatiently into the words he was going to say; his face darkening, he swore beneath his breath.
‘Have a good trip,’ Hope said, and pushed past a startled porter, escaping into the lift.
Keir came back after four days, arriving just as she was thinking of going to bed on Friday night. All day she’d been edgy, her nerves plucked by some baseless tension. When she heard the knock on the door she knew immediately that it was Keir; perhaps a spark of awareness, of wordless communication, had leapt across the distance between them to warn her he was on his way.
She opened the door and he asked, ‘Don’t you have a chain for this?’
‘Yes.’ Her body loosened, heated. She met eyes as clear and brilliant as diamond chips in
a face carved into angles by a fiercely prowling sexuality. His hunger beat through the air, rousing her own so that her breasts tightened and her body tensed.
He slammed the door behind him, slid the chain across and said, ‘Use it in future.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The hard line of his mouth relaxed. ‘Otherwise I’ll worry,’ he said deeply, and bent and kissed her.
Somehow they made it to the bed, but although he managed to use protection he still had his shirt on when he finally thrust deeply into her, and her jeans were dangling from her ankles.
The primitive intensity of their lovemaking, the stark, untamed power they created together, summoned such a wild response that Hope crested almost immediately, muffling her guttural cry in his shoulder. Uncontrollable rapture scorched through her, spinning her into a climax so intense, so perfect that she barely registered the moment when Keir flung his head back and reached his. Shattered by exquisite pleasure, by aching emptiness, she began to cry.
His big body coiled and flexed as he rolled over onto his side, taking her with him, manoeuvring her so that her head came to rest on his shoulder. His voice rumbled beneath her cheek. ‘Are you going to do this after every time we make love?’
‘I hope not,’ she muttered, the words clogged with a bewildering mix of emotions. ‘I don’t know why. I—I never cry!’
He stroked the damp strands of her hair back from her face, his fingers sifting each lock, smoothing it back with such care and finesse that it felt like tenderness. ‘Perhaps you’ll be able to stop when you get used to making love.’
I hope so. But she didn’t say the words aloud. That, after all, was the whole idea of the exercise—to get used to him. Ignoring the shiver scudding down her spine, she murmured on a yawn, ‘Perhaps.’
‘Mmm.’ A finger traced the line of her lips, the shape of her nose, the thick lashes. He bent and kissed away the lingering moisture of her tears.
Hope sighed.
Amusement textured his deep voice. ‘We’d better take a few clothes off before we go to sleep. I don’t mind spending the night in my shirt, but you might find those jeans a bit of a nuisance.’
‘I need a shower,’ she muttered, suddenly afflicted with belated modesty.
‘Me, too. I’ve been travelling for thirty hours.’
She blurted, ‘You go first. You must be exhausted.’
After a moment he said, ‘No, I’ll wait.’
Shyly, she kicked off her jeans and walked naked across to the wardrobe. When she’d found her dressing gown she turned, and her breath blocked her throat. Keir had moved over onto his back, taking up the whole bed and filling the room with his powerful presence—a fascinating mixture of the energy inherent in every masculine curve and angle and line of his lean, graceful body.
Hope stopped, her eyes lingering on the symmetry of wide shoulders and strong arms, of sleek tanned skin and the classic pattern of hair across his chest. Slowly, her voice thick and hesitant, she said, ‘I wish I was an artist. You’re so beautiful.’
To her astonishment colour heated the high, stark cheekbones. ‘In the eye of the beholder.’
‘Modesty doesn’t become you.’
Laughter glinted beneath his dark lashes, and she saw his shaft stir and thicken. ‘If you want to shower you’d better go before I drag you back here.’
Scarlet-faced, she shot into the bathroom and showered quickly, taking a sweet, furtive pleasure in setting out a towel and toiletries for him. When she got back he’d straightened the sheets and had pulled his trousers on.
A muffled sound from above drew both their eyes to the ceiling.
‘It’s my landlady,’ Hope said, colouring again. ‘She’s a light sleeper.’
He looked at her with hooded eyes. ‘Pack a bag and come with me.’
She hesitated. He made no move to persuade her, but she could feel his determination reach out, enclosing her in the brutal force of his will-power. You want to get him out of your system, logic reminded her. Better if you’re with him all the time.
Slowly she said, ‘Yes, all right.’
He gave her a keen look, then nodded and went into the shower.
Her surrender chipped away at the independence she’d constructed so carefully over the years. It’s in a good cause, she reminded herself as the shower sounded again and she hauled down a bag. For a greater freedom.
So why did she feel as though she was sliding further and further into danger? She’d be perfectly safe; once she’d rid herself of this physical obsession she’d see him for the man he really was—sensual, clever, a heart-shakingly magnificent lover, but a mere man just the same, not the mythical being she’d built in her mind, who possessed an erotic power over her that reeked of black magic.
A mere man who had betrayed her spectacularly, she reminded herself forcefully—a ruthless man who’d used her to get close to her father so he could take James Sanderson down—a hard man who fitted the word ‘dominant’ as though he’d been born to it. Mouth pulled into a straight, tense line, Hope set herself to decide just what clothes a woman should pack for a feverish sexual interlude.
She opened the drawer and frowned at her perfectly decent, perfectly sensible underwear. Pretty—but oh for something wildly sexy in silk!
The shower switched off. Still clad in her cotton dressing gown, Hope hissed with dismay and dragged on the first bra and briefs she came to before flying across to the wardrobe, hauling out a shirt and a pair of trousers and struggling into them. She piled underwear and a few of her more decent casual clothes higgledy-piggledy into the bag, and was brushing her hair when Keir came in, once more clad in trousers and shirt.
‘I just need a few things from the bathroom,’ she muttered, dropping the brush into her bag and easing past him to collect her toiletries.
‘Are you working tomorrow?’ he asked when she reemerged.
‘No. I’ve got the whole weekend off.’
Something kindled in his eyes. ‘Then let’s go.’
Instead of taking her to a hotel he drove along the road towards the National Park, finally pulling into the driveway of a house that perched on the seaward side.
‘It belongs to a friend,’ he said as he hooked her bag from the back of the car. ‘I thought you’d prefer it.’
He was right.
In an amused voice he said, ‘Now, what did I say to cause that frown?’
‘Nothing.’ But Hope didn’t want him understanding her. Their relationship had nothing to do with minds and emotions; it was about physical satiation. ‘Nothing at all,’ she said sturdily, and walked from the garage into the house beside him.
They spent the weekend in the house, most of it in bed. In those two days and three nights Hope, a shamelessly willing pupil, discovered that her body was capable of even more graduations of sexuality. Keir taught her the delights of earthiness; as well, she learned sophisticated techniques for increasing pleasure, and revelled in satisfying the swift, uncomplicated hunger that overtook them so often.
Once she had wondered how to seduce him; by the end of that weekend she knew his body so intimately she would never forget his sheer physicality, from the luxuriant way he stretched first thing in the morning to the blatant male power with which he overwhelmed her senses when they made love.
And that happened often. He turned everything into an occasion for lovemaking, seducing her in the kitchen when they cooked dinner, in the sitting room on the rug, and much later in the pool, when he brought her to an orgasm that terrified her with its intensity.
Not once did they read a newspaper or turn on the television set or leave the property, but he did introduce her to billiards, at which she discovered a surprising talent, and they played tennis and vicious games of poker and listened to a state-of-the-art music system.
He knew a lot more about music than she did. Hope realised that it was his greatest joy, one of the few things that helped him relax and forget his business empire.
Another was wh
en they made love. Then he concentrated only on her response and her body. She learned how to pleasure him, that when she ran the tips of her fingernails down his spine he rolled over instantly ready for her; she committed his scent to memory, the smooth glide of his skin was imprinted deep in her cells, the deep, raspy texture of his morning voice would never leave her ears.
She discovered that he knew when to be considerate and gentle, and when to treat her with a forceful, unsparing hunger that never degenerated into roughness or cruelty.
She found out that she was insatiable for him, even when she was tired, even when he woke her in the middle of the night and made love to her in a swathe of moonlight. He had only to touch her, she had only to hear his voice, and she wanted him.
Her plan, she thought starkly on the last day, eyeing the small package she’d found under her pillow, to immunise herself against him had failed miserably.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Open it and see.’
Although it was still early in the morning he was dressed, as was she. They’d woken before dawn and made love with a tinge of desperation because he had to catch a plane.
Panic hollowing out her stomach, she finally managed to get the package open. It was a jeweller’s box. When she cast him a furious look he laughed, and came over and sat down beside her on the bed.
‘No,’ he said, a lean hand holding her fingers closed on the box, ‘it’s not payment, and it’s not some sort of trophy. I saw it and knew it was yours.’ His voice deepened, a raw intensity roughening the words. ‘I imagined making love to you with it on.’
Two days and three nights of excess, yet at that tone Hope’s breath still caught in her throat. Slowly she opened the case. A single stone winked fire at her, golden and incandescent as the heart of the sun. A thin, exquisitely worked chain slid through her fingers; slowly she looped it over her head and let the stone fall into the hollow between her breasts.
‘What is it?’ she asked, feeling its cool weight against her heart.
‘A miniature sun for a summer woman,’ he said, and bent and kissed the spot the stone covered. ‘A canary diamond. I knew what it would look like on you. Wear it and think of me when I’m gone. I’ll be back in a month.’