“I don’t know,” said Lucas. Pushing his knee forward between Honor’s legs, he brought his face so close to hers she could feel the heat of his breath on her cheeks. “Do you always lash out at men when you want them?”
“I don’t want you…” she stammered. But he stopped her with a kiss so passionate she could barely breathe, let alone speak. Closing her eyes, she gave in to the sensation, allowing her senses at last to overwhelm her. Before she knew it she was kissing him back, tentatively at first but then hungrily, her desire escalating in response to his.
Staggering toward the bed, kissing and grabbing and scratching at each other like two wild animals, they finally collapsed on top of it. Honor’s robe was already on the floor, and Lucas had somehow managed to scramble out of his jeans as he wrestled her beneath him.
“I meant what I said,” Honor panted, gasping as he ripped off her camisole, tearing the thin silk as his hands grasped hungrily for her breasts. “I still hate you. You’re arrogant…you’re…” It was hard to get the words out while being manhandled by someone with a body weight roughly three times your own. “You’re sexist. And boorish. And…rude.”
“Yeah, well, I hate you too,” growled Lucas, struggling out of his boxer shorts and nudging her legs wider with his knees. “You’re a snob. You’re horribly spoiled…” He kissed her again, delighted and amazed by the strength of her response and the way her tongue darted into his mouth like a slippery bullet.
“Pushy American bitch,” he said, pinning her arms down on the mattress with all his weight so she was spread like a butterfly on a pin-board. “Stop trying to take the lead.”
Looking down, Honor saw his ramrod-straight erection jutting up toward her belly like a fence post and felt a curious mixture of excitement and dread. Devon had been big, but not that big, and obviously Lucas was far more sexually experienced than she was. He had her arms pinned, so she had to draw one leg up in order to touch his dick with her foot, gently rubbing up and down the shaft with the smooth skin of her instep. Lucas closed his eyes and moaned, moving one hand down to guide himself inside her. But Honor was too quick for him. With a boldness that surprised her as much as it did him, she seized her chance, wriggling free and flipping herself around like a gymnast so that she was on top of him, and their positions were reversed. At least this way she would have some control over how deep he went.
Lucas groaned as she slipped his cock inside her. Part of him wanted to pull away and teach her who was boss. But the other part felt so fucking fantastic, as her tight muscles clenched and released him in a perfect, slowly accelerating rhythm, wild horses couldn’t have made him move. Closing his eyes, he reached up and ran his hands down her bare back, letting his fingers curl around the nape of her neck and run over each of her ribs in turn.
“You’re too thin,” he said.
Honor opened her eyes for a moment and looked at him. She was about to tell him she didn’t need his approval of her weight, or anything, but to her surprise she saw that there was genuine concern in his eyes. So she decided to be honest instead.
“I know. It’s stress,” she said, shrugging. “When it’s bad, I can’t eat.” For the next two hours, they fucked like a pair of hormonally crazed weasels. Now that he’d finally gotten her into bed, Lucas realized just how much he’d been wanting her, and for how long. Sexually, she was a revelation, wilder than even he had imagined, and far more skillful in bed than her blow-up-doll sister. Her physical fitness and stamina were quite awesome. Honor’s body might look fragile, but making love to her, Lucas discovered it was anything but. She was pure muscle. And as for her flexibility…not even the rhythmic gymnast he’d dated in Ibiza last summer could compare. The woman had rubber bones.
For Honor, the experience was equally powerful, but in different ways. Lucas had broken her defenses and allowed years of sexual and emotional frustration to come tumbling out. Yes, he was a good lover—he ought to be, after all the practice he’d had—but it wasn’t just that. Tonight was the first time Honor had had sex since Devon. It had reached the point where she’d gone without it for so long she’d convinced herself that she didn’t need it. That she was happy to let Palmers be her life, lover, family, everything. But Lucas’s touch had changed all that. Like an H-bomb exploding through her body, blasting away all the fear and the pain and the loneliness, he’d reduced her to her most primitive, animal self. The delight she felt with him inside her was indescribable.
At last they collapsed side by side on the sheets like two sweat-soaked marathon runners.
“If I ask you something,” said Honor, staring at the ceiling, once she’d regained enough breath to speak, “do you promise to give me a truthful answer?”
Turning onto his side, Lucas propped himself up on an elbow and looked at her. She looked like she’d been swimming. Her hair glistened with sweat like dewy grass, and all her makeup was smudged off. Above anything else, she looked incredibly young. He didn’t think he’d ever wanted another human being so much.
“Of course,” he whispered seriously. “I’ll never lie to you.”
“Am I better in bed than Tina?”
The question was so unexpected, Lucas burst out laughing.
“Sorry,” he said, seeing Honor looking crestfallen. “I’m sorry. I’ve just never heard you sound so insecure before.” Her face fell further, and he quickly added: “Of course. Of course you’re better. Jesus, Honor, your sister…she was…it was nothing.”
“Nothing, sexually? Or nothing…”
“Nothing, nothing. Nothing sexually, nothing emotionally. Nothing to me,” he said fervently. “Nothing like you.”
Apparently satisfied, Honor fell silent.
“So, can I ask you something?” said Lucas eventually.
“Oh, yeah, you were great too,” Honor murmured, half asleep already. “Much better than Devon and everything.”
Lucas laughed. “I know that,” he said, without a hint of irony.
“Oh, you do, do you?” said Honor, sitting up. She’d forgotten just how infuriatingly arrogant he could be. “So what’s your question, then?”
“Do you believe me? About Anton, and all the shit that happened that summer?”
Honor nodded slowly. “I think I believed you at the hospital,” she admitted. “I thought about what you said a lot, afterward, and it all made sense. I just couldn’t process it then. It was too soon, after the fire, losing Palmers.” She shook her head, fighting back tears. “It was like I was at emotional ground zero. I didn’t want to have to think about anything else. I didn’t have the energy.”
“I understand,” said Lucas softly. “Believe me. I do.”
Nestling against each other in the silk sheets like two sleepy, satisfied cats in the sun, they reveled in each other’s warmth and the luxury of their surroundings.
“Isn’t it great, being in someone else’s hotel for a change?” said Lucas, dialing room service and ordering up a bottle of vintage champagne and a large bowl of french fries for Honor. “If I owned this place I’d be stressing about every crack in the ceiling right now.”
“Me too!” laughed Honor. “I thought I was the only person neurotic enough to do that sort of thing.”
“God, no. I don’t think anyone in this business can switch off,” said Lucas. “Not if they’re any good at it anyway.”
The fries arrived, as hot and salty and greasy as Lucas could have wished for, and he was encouraged to see Honor tucking into them with undisguised relish, in between gulps of ice-cold champagne.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, her mouth full, blushing as she wiped away a trickle of vegetable oil with the back of her hand. “I guess I worked up an appetite.”
“Good.” Grinning, Lucas slid beneath the covers like a torpedo and began kissing her between her thighs, gently parting her pubic hair with his fingers. “Let’s get you a bit hungrier, and then we can order more.”
Honor gasped and giggled, her legs spontaneously opening wider as his tongue d
arted across her clitoris. She came embarrassingly quickly.
“Hey. What’s wrong?” Emerging from beneath the sheets, Lucas was horrified to see she was crying.
“Nothing,” she sobbed. “That was just…so nice.”
Pulling her against him, Lucas stroked her long, tangled mane of hair as she lay on his chest. “It was nice for me too,” he said, gruffly. “Better than nice. Christ, I’ve wanted you for so long.” Slowly, as the long hours of the night rolled by, he told her about everything he’d been through since leaving the Herrick: his long, desperate job search in London; the street brawl with his old boss in Ibiza that marked the low point for his battered self-esteem; the chance meeting with Connor Armstrong that changed his fortunes.
“Every day, when I walk into my hotel in Paris, or onto the new site in East Hampton, I pinch myself. I still can’t believe this is my life.”
“Lucky you,” said Honor bitterly. “Every time I walk onto that charred patch of earth that used to be Palmers, I pinch myself too. I can’t believe this is my life. But it is.”
Lucas kissed the top of her head tenderly. “I’m so sorry.”
“Hey, I don’t want your pity, OK?” said Honor, suddenly tense again. He could feel the latticework of muscles in her back and shoulders tightening up, one after the other, like a subcutaneous Mexican wave.
“Palmers isn’t done yet, whatever people might think. I’m gonna rebuild.”
Lucas didn’t say anything, scared of putting his foot in it again. Privately he thought she hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of convincing anyone to fund her little pipe dream. Not with the Herrick riding high less than two blocks away and now his new Luxe hot on its heels. Being a boutique, and modest in scale, he hoped to have the place built and open within a year, assuming he found a new, supportive partner.
“How are things with you and Petra?” he said, steering the conversation back to their mutual enemies.
Honor rolled her eyes. “Dreadful. That bitch has been out to get me from day one,” she said, wriggling around in an effort to get comfortable in the heat of Lucas’s arms. “She’s even worse than you were.”
“Thanks a lot,” said Lucas.
He told her about his own long-running feud with Petra and his theory that Anton hired her as a deliberate, final slap in the face to him.
“If I were you, I’d have fought back,” said Honor. “Set the record straight in the media about all this stuff. Or, failing that, gone over to the bastard’s house with a baseball bat.”
“I’ve thought about it,” said Lucas, “believe me. In the early days I thought of little else. But then I realized: there’s no better revenge than success. Anton wanted to crush me, and he failed. Now I’m an owner, just like him. And I’m setting up shop right in his backyard. If I know the man at all, that’s causing him more pain right now than a baseball bat ever could. I’ll bet Petra’s choking on her vodka too.” He chuckled quietly. “Come to think of it, maybe she only drinks blood?”
He looked across at Honor to check whether she was laughing and was annoyed to see that she’d fallen asleep. But he couldn’t stay angry for long. Curled up in the fetal position with her back toward him, her truculent, hawk-like features softened in repose, hair falling across her apple breasts like Eve, she was already murmuring in her dreams. She looked so innocent and childlike, he wished he had a camera handy to capture the image so he could tease her with it in the morning.
Watching her sleep beside him, her breathing becoming deeper and slower with each passing second, he felt stupidly, deliriously happy. For a moment, he let himself indulge in a little White Knight fantasy. He imagined himself somehow finding her the backer she needed and helping her to rebuild her beloved Palmers. He pictured her slavishly grateful to him for saving her ass, offering to do “anything, anything at all” to thank him, while Petra struggled on foot down the Long Island Expressway’s breakdown lane, dragging her suitcases behind her like a hobo.
Laughing at his own hubris, he pulled the sheet up over Honor and himself and flicked off the bedside lamp. Life, unfortunately, rarely turned out like one’s fantasies. But one thing he intended to make sure of: this time next year, Luxe America would be a reality.
As for helping Honor, he’d just have to see what came up.
The first thing Honor was aware of when she woke was the glaring, blinding sunlight pouring in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The second was the fact that she was not in her own bed. And the third was that someone seemed to be busy sawing through her skull with a hacksaw.
Groaning, she sat up, shielding her eyes from the light and trying to get her bearings. The next thing she knew, Lucas, fresh from the shower and wearing only a blue towel wrapped toga-style around his snake hips, was looming over her like a gladiator.
“Good morning,” he said brightly, chuckling at her all-too-evident hangover. “Feeling a little the worse for wear, are we, darling?”
Immediately, Honor felt her hackles rising. One night together did not make her his darling. Her brain was still foggy with sleep, but she knew she must have let her guard down horribly, a thought that left her gripped by a stomach-churning fear. But before she could say anything, Lucas had kissed her on the top of her head (patronizing!) and launched into a monologue about his own plans for the day.
“As soon as I’ve called the lost baggage morons at the airport, I need to get going,” he said, dropping his towel without a hint of embarrassment while he rummaged around in his bag from a clothing store for underwear and a shirt. “I have a meeting with a possible new partner at one over at the Venetian. Oh, that reminds me. Be an angel and call down to housekeeping, would you? Ask them to bring my blue suit up. They must have pressed it by now.”
Honor’s mouth opened and closed furiously, but no words came out. Who did he think she was? His little Geisha?
Slowly, through the molasses-thick fog of her brain, the events of last night began falling into place. She felt sick. The sex had been amazing, no doubt about that. She still felt sore between her legs, and every muscle in her body ached after her energetic performance. Even now, with her head throbbing and stomach churning like a washing machine on spin, the memory of his touch excited her to her a ridiculous degree.
But that was the problem. OK, so he fucked like Mick Jagger. And OK, so he hadn’t betrayed her and Tina, like she thought. But he was still Lucas. Still one of the most arrogant, chauvinist pigs to walk the planet. If not the most arrogant. Still the guy who, after one fuck, expected her to run wifely errands for him. Who assumed automatically that his stupid meetings were more important than hers.
Watching him pull his Calvins on over his perfect tennis-player’s ass, she began to justify her anger in her own mind: he’d taken advantage of her in a vulnerable moment. She’d been drunk out of her head. She didn’t know what she was doing.
But the real truth was, she was frightened. She’d opened up to Lucas last night, both literally and metaphorically, in a way she’d never done before with any man, not even Devon. She’d allowed him to see her vulnerability, her weakness, her need. That gave him power over her. Power she was now desperate to claw back.
“Get your own suit,” she snapped, wrapping the sheet around her body and heading for the shower. “I’m busy too, you know.”
Still giddy with the rapture of last night, Lucas misjudged her mood completely. Running after her, he grabbed the corner of the sheet and whipped it off.
“Call housekeeping,” he grinned. “Now. Before I put you over my knee.” Somehow she looked even more gorgeous this morning, all crumpled and grumpy and still warm from bed. He made a clumsy lunge for her breasts and was taken aback when she first ducked, then lashed out at him like a rattlesnake, only narrowly missing landing a karate chop right on his balls.
“Whoa!” Backing away, he frowned, confused. “What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter?” said Honor. “Are you kidding me? Get your own fucking suit! I have me
etings of my own today which, thanks to you, I’m now late for. I was supposed to be having breakfast with Fred Gillespie at nine.”
Gillespie had been a big name in hotels in San Francisco and Seattle back in the sixties, around the time Trey took over at Palmers, and was still respected. He was something of an unofficial godfather to Honor. She hoped he might be interested in funding her rebuild, or at least loaning her some seed capital until the insurance money came through, so she could make a start.
“What time is it, anyway?” she snapped.
“Eleven,” said Lucas sulkily.
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because I didn’t know you had a meeting, did I?” he yelled. “Jesus, Honor. I’m not psychic.”
This was just great. Fucking American women and their fucking career bullshit. You never knew where you stood from one day to the next. Last night Honor had practically begged him to be the big, strong, macho man, and if her orgasms were anything to go by, she’d loved every minute of it. But this morning he seemed to have woken up with Germaine fucking Greer.
Well if she wanted to pick a fight, he knew how to play that game.
“I can’t believe you’re seriously comparing sitting around drinking tea with some old Harvard club friend of your father’s with my investor meeting,” he said.
“Fred’s a serious investor,” Honor insisted.
“In what?” snapped Lucas. “Scorched earth? You don’t have a hotel for him to invest in, Honor. Wake up! Palmers is gone.”
For a moment she looked so wounded he regretted losing his temper.
“Look, I didn’t mean that, OK?” He took a step toward her.
“Oh, sure you did,” said Honor, storming into the bathroom and slamming and locking the door behind her.
“Honor.” He banged on the door, gently at first, but when she didn’t respond his knocks became louder and more irritated. “Stop being such a spoiled child. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I shouldn’t have. But you have to face reality. Palmers is gone. I wish that weren’t the case, but getting angry about it doesn’t change the facts. And I do have a global business to run. Now, if that makes you jealous—”
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