Caught in His Gilded World

by Lucy Ellis

  ‘I’m just imagining the troupe all laid out like sardines in a can,’ she felt obliged to explain.

  He looked at her as if she’d said something ridiculous, but she told herself he wasn’t a woman in a man’s hotel room, being carried around like luggage.

  Maybe she should make it clear. ‘I’m just saying...don’t get any ideas.’

  ‘About these other girls?’

  Gigi bit her lip. She wanted to say, About me, but clearly he wasn’t having any ideas. She was the one entertaining a fantasy.

  ‘I’m just saying,’ she mumbled, embarrassed. ‘Anyway, in practice it wouldn’t work. There’d be fights.’

  He gave a gruff snort.

  Gigi craned her head over his shoulder but, nope, he showed no interest in the bed. He didn’t even break stride.

  He definitely hadn’t confused her with Solange.

  He dumped her on the bathroom vanity.

  Gigi was greeted with her reflection, which drove any thoughts of being confused with sexy girls who dated movie stars out of her head. She looked awful.

  All of her freckles had become heat blotches and swarmed together like angry little ants at a picnic.

  He looked—well, hot and sexy. Although all that brooding intensity and muscled capability was currently being channelled into running a tap.

  Which was odd.

  A sudden unreasoning panic gripped her. Had he brought her back here to punish her for the photographers? Was this some kind of set-up? If he wasn’t bent on seduction why else would he bring her up here?

  He took hold of her feet.

  ‘Wow. Okay—stop there.’ She clamped her hands over his, eyeing him warily. ‘I’ll deal with the wear and tear. There’s nothing to see here.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’ His dark eyes flickered over her face. ‘I doubt you’ve got anything I haven’t seen before.’

  Had he just glanced at her chest when he said that?

  Gigi felt her nipples tingle inside the soft cups of her sweater girl bra.

  Uh-oh. This was not good.

  Her relationships with men thus far had been of the duck and weave variety. As far as Khaled was concerned she was pretty much a sitting duck.

  She was so distracted by her thoughts that she didn’t immediately catch him working her socks off. As her cracked heels appeared she yelped, dragged back her feet like pulling up a drawbridge and wedged herself in hard against the mirror.

  He said something in Russian and looked her up and down, as if she were a problem he had to solve.

  But she didn’t care. If there was anything seriously unsexy about her it was her feet. It was where all the damage and scarring almost twenty years of dance had wrought was so violently on display. It was like a confession. Nothing had been easy and she had paid a price, and right now she wasn’t confessing to him!

  ‘What is the problem now?’

  His Russian accent was heavier, and that just upped the sexy quotient—which wasn’t helping.

  And what did he mean now? As if she’d been causing problems left right and centre...? He was a fully paid-up member of their trouble brigade. She wasn’t wearing total responsibility for the disasters of this morning.

  ‘There is no problem,’ she grumbled. ‘I just want to look after this myself.’

  He looked sceptical.

  ‘I didn’t ask to be brought up here, you know. I didn’t ask for all this attention.’

  He gave her a long, searching look that implied she had. Which was so unfair!

  Gigi wriggled uncomfortably. His gaze dropped lower and caught on something.

  What now? Gigi looked down. She’d been aware that her midriff was bare, her T-shirt having worked its way up in all the manhandling, but she hadn’t given any thought to the fact that because her jeans were low-riders she was showing off quite a lot of skin—nor to the fact that the indent of her belly button rose high above them, exposing her piercing.

  Before she could even think to pull her T-shirt down he brushed his knuckles over her navel and set the miniature silver bell tinkling.

  ‘It’s a bell,’ she said. Cringed. Could she sound more stupid?

  He did it again, his touch unbearably gentle. Suggestive of how he would be in another even more intimate situation.

  Gigi bit her lip.

  Lifted her eyes to his.

  He was smiling at her. ‘I wondered what that sound was.’ His accent had thickened.

  Her breathing grew rapid and shallow in response.

  She was now throbbing ever so subtly between her legs. All he had to do was touch her again for a little longer and that throbbing was going to detonate.

  The problem was it also drew her attention to the way she was angled against him, thighs apart, virtually inviting him into heaven.

  She could hear Lulu’s lecture: ‘There are really only two situations in a woman’s life when she should be displayed at this angle to a man, and if that man isn’t her significant other he should be her gynaecologist.’

  Denim or no, Gigi felt self-conscious, and she brought her knees down fast—only now he was standing between them and she was stuck...unless he moved.

  He moved. Almost nonchalantly, but she wasn’t fooled. And with the flats of his hands on the bench on either side of her she was trapped.

  This was his move. He was making a move on her.

  Gigi’s heart began to flutter like crazy, because he was so close, and he smelt so good, and the energy pulsing between them was like jungle drums in her blood.

  She swallowed, unable to break the clasp of his gaze.

  Sweet heaven, she had to find a way off this bench. Because so much more than a full reveal of her manky feet was barrelling towards them, and she really didn’t want to be the showgirl who gave it up on a bathroom vanity to the man who might or might not be instrumental in taking away the livelihoods of the Bluebirds.

  And—oh, God—he was smiling at her.

  ‘So what’s the problem with your feet?’

  This time his dark drawl sounded a lot less impatient, as if whatever the problem was he’d be willing to take the time to fix it.

  Immediately her mind went to her other problem and how much time he might devote to that...

  She cleared her strangled throat. ‘There’s no problem.’

  He vibrated the bell with the tip of his thumb and she made a soft, inarticulate sound. He raised his knowing eyes to hers. The air between them pulled taut.

  ‘Tinker Bell,’ he said.

  ‘Tinker Bell?’ she echoed doubtfully.

  ‘I read the book when I was a boy and I always had a thing for Tink—little nuisance that she was. Wendy didn’t do it for me.’

  Gigi narrowed her blue eyes at him and he wanted to laugh, because telling a woman she reminded you of a fairy from an old children’s book was almost as crazy as what he was doing right now—sliding the pads of his middle and forefinger over the incredibly silken flesh just below her navel, stroking her there.

  He only needed to slide his fingers a couple of inches south and he could snap the buttons on her jeans. Another couple of inches and he’d know exactly what she was wearing under the denim. Another couple and sweet, perfect nirvana.

  ‘Stop that,’ she croaked, nipping at her lower lip.

  He drew back his hand into a tight fist and exhaled roughly.

  She was right.

  He exhaled. ‘So what about these feet?’

  Her mouth dropped open slightly but he had already slid his hands under her soles and brought them up onto the bench.

  She didn’t fight him this time, but drew up her knees, eyes squeezed shut, like a woman about to endure a root canal at the dentist. It would have been funny had he not been so deeply, unambi
guously aroused. So hard it hurt.

  He deftly and carefully eased off her socks and tossed them into the wastepaper basket, never to be heard from again. It was a hard shove to his unambiguous impulse to bury himself in her soft, agile beauty to discover how torn up her feet were. He thoughtfully stroked his thumb along the welts criss-crossing the top of her feet. This damage seemed to be from long ago, the scars faded to white.

  She had narrow, knobby-toed feet, shaped by the years she’d used them to sculpt the exquisitely formed female body sitting before him. The raised white welts, however, didn’t make a lot of sense.

  When he was a boy, living in the mountains, he’d learned to fix the wings of birds and splint broken legs for all kinds of small mammals. His stepfather had patiently taught him, along with lessons in how to track and perform a clean kill. Before everything had gone wrong. Before he’d understood that with every year he grew more and more like his father in both feature and reputation.

  And being bullied from the age of eight had nothing to do with him being good with his fists and quick to take offence.

  He rubbed the pads of his thumbs over her calluses and she made a sound of despair.

  He understood shame. He understood what it could do to you if you didn’t fight it.

  ‘Relax,’ he said, looking up, but her eyes were squeezed shut again, as if that way she could hide.

  Her very real dismay loosened the loop of memory that had momentarily tethered him to the past and the tightness in him lifted. Something softer fought for room. He knew how to make her forget her shame, her fear.

  He took one of her long, narrow feet in his hands and pressed his thumbs into the sensitive cord of muscle where her foot arched. Avoiding her broken blisters, he dragged his thumbs along the soles of her feet.

  She moaned, and her blue eyes shot wide to meet his in honest bewilderment.

  A deep satisfaction stirred within him.

  He knew how to handle her. Because under her shock, like a promise, was a sensuality as natural and unadorned as she was.

  She was a beautiful wild thing he had caught, and he could see a pulse hammering at the base of her throat. But he knew how to handle a frightened wild creature...

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘GOOD?’

  ‘Don’t...’ she groaned. When clearly she meant more.

  He pushed again.

  She gave a helpless moan and gave herself up to the relief. He kept working until the tension lifted off her and her head rolled back and she moaned again—a deep, utterly unselfconscious sound. Incredibly sexy. He felt it deep in his groin.

  ‘Good?’

  She made another approving sound.

  Too good. He was dangerously close to losing control himself.

  ‘This might hurt.’

  Gigi hissed like a kettle as he slid her feet into the water.

  Tender, exposed new skin didn’t mix with water—even Plaza Athénée water.

  Gigi cracked open one eye and then the other.

  She hadn’t been able to look at him while he worked on her ugly feet, and now she scanned his face anxiously for signs of disgust. Only she could find none.

  He made quick work of the caked blood with the dexterous use of a flannel, before letting out the water and wrapping her feet in the sleek hand towel folded beside the basin.

  His practicality saved her from real embarrassment.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, a little at a loss as to what else to say.

  She wasn’t used to being looked after, she realised, and that it should be by this tough, intimidating man confused her.

  He had handled her feet with a care and generosity that had once again made her mind wander to what else he could do with those large hands... She eyed him almost shyly.

  ‘You’re a funny girl’ was all he said.

  Gigi’s warm feelings faded.

  She’d heard that before. ‘Gigi the Clown’. Her papa’s failsafe response to her falls, tumbles and general efforts to get him to pay attention to her.

  ‘Funny ha-ha, or funny crazy?’ she asked, her voice a little raw.

  He glanced up at her, as if she’d said something odd, his dark eyes making her tummy flip.

  ‘Funny sexy,’ he said, as if it was obvious, and she believed him. He set the towel aside.

  Sexy? Offstage sexy? Really?

  He opened what was clearly a first aid kit and took out cotton wool, antiseptic and plasters.

  She bit her lip. ‘They’re not pretty,’ she said in a low voice.

  She hated this—hated it that she felt obliged to point it out, hated laying herself bare. She’d rather just strip off all her clothes and distract him with what she knew worked for an audience of seven hundred every night.

  ‘You’re a dancer. You’ve got a dancer’s feet.’

  ‘I know, but the other girls don’t have half my damage.’

  He raised his eyes to hers and she saw a lot of questions, most of which Gigi really didn’t want to answer. But at the same time she didn’t want to make them too much of a big deal.

  ‘When I was in my early teens I was in a highwire act and it involved twisting cords around my feet. My papa said the scarring would go away, but it never did.’

  ‘Your father? How was he involved?’

  ‘He managed the circus—Valente’s International.’ She couldn’t help lifting her chin a little. In spite of everything she remained proud of that heritage. ‘Valente’s had been a family concern for almost a hundred years when my father was bankrupted.’

  ‘You were an acrobat?’

  ‘Not a very good one,’ she admitted. ‘But it cured me of any residual fear of heights.’

  Being driven up a rope with your father yelling that you were holding up rehearsal had effectively removed that fear.

  ‘This is criminal,’ he said, running his thumb over a welt. ‘What kind of a father allows this to happen to his daughter?’

  Her heart was pounding. His questions were grazing too close to some painful truths in her past.

  ‘That’s not for you to judge,’ she answered stiffly. ‘You weren’t there. It’s a hard life—you have to be seasoned to perform every night. The pain is a part of it.’ She could hear her father’s voice, lecturing her on this.

  ‘Yet you’re ashamed?’

  Gigi hesitated. ‘I—’

  ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of, Red.’

  ‘I know that,’ she said quickly.

  She stared at her feet, wondering why she was even telling him all this. ‘Do you think you could stop calling me Red?’ She looked up. ‘I’m Gigi...or Gisele—’

  ‘Gisele.’

  Gigi’s breath caught at the way his dark Russian accent turned her name into something quite beguiling.

  Feminine.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  His sincerity was a lot to take in. She blinked. Looked down and flexed her toes. ‘Unlike my feet.’

  He looked at her seriously for a moment from those dark assessing eyes, and then straightened and whisked his T-shirt up and off.

  Gigi was almost blinded by all that gorgeous golden skin suddenly on display, pulled taut over slabs of muscle and not an ounce of fat that she could see.

  His physique wasn’t fine and lightweight, like the boys she danced with. Although lean, it was heavy with broad bones and muscle, his chest covered in fine dark hair. Gigi’s fingers stirred restlessly with the urge to tangle her fingers in it.

  He was most definitely a different breed from the men she was used to. It wasn’t quite fanciful to say looking at him half stripped was like being introduced to the male sex for the first time.

  ‘Take a look at this,’ he said, in that deep gruff voice.

 
He presented her with his gloriously defined back, reaching up to place his fingertips above a nasty scar on his left shoulder. ‘This one was caused by a bullet—it lodged in bone, shattered my scapula—and here...’ He took her much smaller hand and put it on his lean waist, where something had left a seven-inch incision that had healed badly and left a raised white scar. ‘Knife wound.’

  He turned around.

  ‘The discolouration here...’ He pulled his waistband away from the line of his lean muscled hip, revealing a taut pelvic cradle and dark hair arrowing down to his sex and a splash of darker pigmentation where some of the skin, obviously puckered, indicated burns. He spoke calmly but in a low voice. ‘That was an explosion on a road that was supposed to have been cleared.’

  Gigi stroked her fingers over the old wound, viscerally aware that she was touching his bare flesh and that he felt hot and hard and male. But on a more conscious level she was horrified by the kind of life he’d led to cause these injuries. The raised skin she had under her fingertips was testimony to the poor medical care he’d received. Bullets? Knives?

  ‘How did you get these?’

  ‘National Service. Hunting.’

  He was looking down at her now with a faint smile, the nature of which would have made a more virtuous girl uneasy. Although Gigi guessed she was that virtuous girl.

  ‘I’ve got more, but that would involve removing more clothing than you’re probably comfortable with.’

  Gigi had opened her mouth to tell him she felt pretty comfortable with clothing being removed when she caught the glint in his eyes.

  Her breath caught.

  He wanted her.

  * * *

  Before she could properly react his arm was going around her, his hand was at the back of her head, delving gently into her hair, and she only had a moment to look into his eyes before he lowered his mouth to hers.

  He just took that kiss.

  The confidence of his move left her with nowhere to go, and Gigi found herself going under with the sensuous slide of his mouth over hers. She parted her lips, the masculine taste of him invading every pore of her being. Her lashes drifted down. He didn’t hurry it—he enjoyed it.

  She clutched at him, giving way to his superior technique. No one had ever kissed her like this before. It was ravishing, and she never wanted him to stop.