Mistress for a Weekend

by Susan Napier

  She pulled a face. ‘That’s not what Ryan said.’

  ‘A catalyst is wasted on an inert substance. From what I overheard at the party, I would guess that he was the one with the boringly conventional mind. And the bathroom high jinks certainly suggest a sad lack of imaginative flair. A shower stall is so much more versatile than a narrow cramped bathtub—as you would have discovered last night if you hadn’t been in such a hurry to run off….’

  Nora almost choked on a slice of red pepper and hastily gulped at her fresh glass of iced tea. ‘Which reminds me, you still haven’t told me the real reason you’re so keen for me to hide out here for the weekend,’ she said to cover her blushes. ‘I wonder what it is you think I know that would make me a danger to you if I went back to Auckland?’

  The seductive amusement was wiped off his face as he studied her brightly innocent expression from under lowered brows.

  His long fingers toyed restlessly with the stem of his empty wineglass.

  ‘I’ll answer your question if you’ll answer one of mine,’ he offered, with such smooth guile that Nora almost grinned.

  In fact, the knowledge that she was innocent of all his suspicions put her in a position of hidden strength when it came to bargaining with the truth. It was Blake who had secrets to protect.

  ‘As long as it doesn’t involve me giving you confidential information about my employer,’ she stated firmly.

  He gave her a bland look. ‘I would never try to compromise your integrity.’ At her disbelieving snort, he added, ‘I have the greatest admiration for people who fight for their ethical principles.’

  ‘Even as you try to circumvent them,’ Nora murmured, although, strangely enough, she believed him. ‘So, what’s your one question?’ She propped her chin on her hand, the reflection from the flickering candles creating dancing flames of mischief in her honey-brown eyes, her sharpened wits ready to repel any attempt at subtle trickery.

  ‘Why are you afraid of heights?’

  CHAPTER NINE

  NORA’S BODY JERKED in surprise and her chin slid off the back of her palm, her teeth meeting with a sharp click that made her head hum.

  ‘That’s it? That’s your question?’

  ‘I’m curious,’ he said, hooking one arm over the back of his chair, angling his body towards her, his eyes intent on the startled oval of her face. ‘Is it a bad case of vertigo, or a genuine phobia?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by genuine,’ she flared defensively. ‘I’m not putting it on, if that’s what you’re implying—’

  ‘I think you’re confusing me with your former friend.’ Once again he displayed an alarming ability to read her mind. ‘I was in the glass lift with you, remember? I know you weren’t faking that panic attack…although if it was a full-blown phobia I doubt that I would have been able to distract you as completely as I did….’

  Nora suspected he was seriously underrating his sexual impact, but she wasn’t going to pander to his already healthy ego by saying so.

  ‘I thought that fake florist you sicced on me—’

  ‘Doug is actually my Chief of Security,’ he said.

  ‘I thought Doug—’ she pinched out the offender’s name with disdain ‘—had ferreted out everything there was to know about me. Didn’t he mention how my parents died?’ Finding she needed to do something with her hands, Nora stood and began to clear the table.

  ‘Only that they were killed in an accident when you were four years old—I assumed it was a car crash.’ He circled her slim wrist with implacably gentle fingers as she reached across for his plate. ‘Leave the dishes,’ he ordered with rough impatience, tugging her around the edge of the table until she stood facing him. ‘What happened, Nora?’

  Why was she resisting? It was old news, after all…

  She sighed. ‘We were picnicking at a regional beach park and Mum and Dad went for a walk up a track over the headland. It was the day after some heavy rain and my mother slipped and went over the edge of the cliff. When my dad climbed down to help her they both fell to the rocks below.’

  His lean face tightened with shock. His fingers slipped from her wrist to enclose her hand in a compassionate grip. ‘My God, you saw all this? No wonder you were traumatised—!’

  ‘Oh, no!’ She was chastened by his shaken response to her stark description. ‘Sean and I never saw anything—we were with my aunt at the far end of the beach where there was a sand-castle competition for kids. I didn’t know the details until years later. I can’t remember what they told me at the time. Sean was nine, old enough to understand what had happened, but I don’t even have any real memories of life with Mum and Dad.’

  ‘But you’ve been afraid of heights ever since?’ She glanced yearningly at the dirty dishes, but he caught her other hand and drew her reluctant body further between his splayed knees. ‘Nora?’

  She sighed at the unyielding set of his jaw. This was the part she was really reluctant to talk about.

  ‘No, only since I was fourteen, if you must know. It was just a silly overreaction…’ She trailed off, but he waited patiently for her to continue. ‘I went on a biology field trip with my high school class. I didn’t realise until we got there that it was the same regional park. I’d never been back there, but we were up on the cliffs looking at nesting sites and I felt this compulsion to take a quick look over the edge—to—I don’t know—just to see.’

  He leaned forward and she was aware of the hard column of his splayed thighs, the utter intensity of his gaze, the latent strength in the lithe body. It was both alarming and alluring to be the focus of all his concentrated attention, almost as if he really cared…

  ‘So I looked down—and I saw—a woman was sunbathing on one of the slabs of rock at the base of the cliff…She was lying on her back on a red towel with her long hair spread out around her head—for a moment I actually thought that all the red was her blood! I didn’t realise some of the guys in the class had been rough-housing around behind me, and right at that moment I saw her—’ Her breath grew choppy. ‘Well, do you know that silly trick where a person sneaks up and grabs you around the waist with a violent jerk that seems to shove you forward but really just rattles you in place—?’

  Blake cursed, surging to his feet, flattening her captive hands against his chest before roughly enclosing her in protective arms.

  ‘Goddamned idiots,’ he growled into the nimbus of curls at her temple, his hand moving up and down her rigid spine.

  Nora tilted her head back so that she could see his face, his ferocious scowl brightening her heart. ‘They didn’t know my history; they were just boys being boys. Any other time and place and I probably would have been able to laugh it off,’ she said, striving to be fair.

  ‘As it was, I totally freaked out. Completely lost the plot, right there in front of the whole class. It was so-o-o humiliating. I knew what was happening but I just couldn’t seem to stop myself—screams, tears, throwing up—and worse…’ She bit her unruly tongue, dropping her gaze, hoping that he wouldn’t pick up on that mortifying detail. For a shy overweight teenager, losing control of her bladder in front of her peers had been a deeply shaming experience.

  ‘Anyway, I avoided high places completely for a while, but I eventually taught myself ways to cope.’

  Going to university in Dunedin, she had had little choice—the city was much hillier than Invercargill and boasted a daunting number of multi-storey buildings. And, of course, by then there’d been Ryan to adore and impress…

  ‘I can usually handle the anxiety OK now, as long as I get the time to psyche myself up beforehand,’ she added. ‘Thank God, it’s never been as bad it was that first time.’

  He looked down at her restless fingers, smoothing and re-smoothing his T-shirt, and slowly let his arms drift down to settle around her narrow hips. As he had suspected, the ruffled sparrow had the heart of a gamecock. When she was knocked off her perch she didn’t lie in the dust waiting to be rescued. She rescued herself.


  ‘Because you’re no longer that young impressionable girl.’ He brushed a stray curl back from her cheek, tucking it behind her neat ear, taking his time smoothing it into place until her skittish gaze darted back to his. ‘Maybe your fear at the time was exaggerated by a form of post-traumatic stress—delayed feelings of grief and loss, especially the loss of your mother.’

  Nora frowned at him, her hands spreading wide over his chest in instinctive protest. ‘But Tess is the only mother I remember having—’

  ‘That doesn’t mean the memories aren’t there.’ His fingers had lingered on the sensitive skin behind her ear, toying with the lock of hair, his knuckles grazing her delicate lobe. ‘Until you were four you were bonded to your birth mother, and then suddenly she vanished from your life. It must have been profoundly bewildering and frightening. You were obviously able to transfer your maternal bond to your aunt, although I notice that you don’t call her Mum, or share her surname—’

  ‘Sean still called her Aunt Tess so she thought it would be less confusing if I did, too. Lots of people call their parents by their first names,’ Nora murmured, distracted by the little trickles of heat sliding down the back of her neck.

  The strong supportive hand that had been in the small of her back had somehow moved south, his fingers curving down over the gentle flare of her bottom, the warmth of his hard palm tilting her hips against the cradle of his thighs, while her small breasts grazed his chest.

  She struggled to pretend that she hadn’t noticed, in case she was obliged to object. ‘Anyway, Tess and Pat didn’t formally adopt us, and Dad’s father wanted Sean and me to carry on the family name—Dad was an only child.’

  Nora’s breathing was breaking up again, but not from the echoes of panic. That Blake was naked under his thin trousers was becoming more obvious with each passing moment. She could feel the unmistakable masculine shape of him against the hollow of her groin, the soft bulge of muscle slowly firming into a distinct ridge.

  ‘What makes you such an expert on young girls, anyway?’ she heard herself babbling wildly. ‘I thought your sisters were all older than you.’

  His fingers abandoned her ear to trail lightly down the side of her neck, his thumb dipping into the small indentation at the base of her throat.

  ‘Four nieces.’

  ‘Oh!’ An unexpected laugh began to bubble up inside her, mingling with the intoxicating fizz brewing in her blood. ‘No nephews?’ she guessed.

  He answered her with a mocking glower of discontent. ‘My life is a plague of women. Kate’s seventeen-year-old twins are reckless tearaways who need firm and frequent squashing.’

  An effervescent giggle escaped Nora’s compressed lips, unconsciously relaxing her guard. The new information had put the ruthless predator male in an entirely different light.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he demanded

  She had screwed up her honey-gold eyes, her freckled nose wrinkling. ‘I’m trying to visualise you as a father figure,’ she dared to tease.

  ‘Oh, please don’t!’ His thumb flicked up under the point of her chin, lifting it to meet her punishment in the form of a smouldering gaze and sultry purr. ‘Incest is not one of the sins I had in mind for you to commit…’

  ‘I—Really? W-what sins?’ she said, trying hard to maintain her brazen air and realising from his glint of satisfaction that she wasn’t doing a very good job.

  His head dipped, his face so close that she could see the faint throb of the blue vein on his temple and count the tiny green flecks that gleamed like buried gems in his eyes.

  ‘Well, let me see…’ he murmured, his warm breath caressing her flushed cheek. He swooped down to graze a soft kiss against her jaw, moving up to settle lightly on her pale pink mouth before she had time to do more than draw a shaky breath. Even braced for more of his outrageousness she was surprised by the violent kick of her heart when his tongue briefly slid against hers, only to withdraw with a tantalising flick that left her tastebuds craving more….

  He now employed his clever tongue to even greater seductive purpose. ‘I think lust, gluttony and covetousness are definitely on the list of our transgressions…’ he nibbled suggestively at her lower lip ‘…with possibly a long, lazy stretch of voluptuous sloth afterwards. What do you say?’ He rubbed his hawkish nose gently over hers, slanting his head to take her mouth with another, frustratingly light, languid kiss.

  ‘Of course, if you’re really hung up about the father thing,’ he whispered, ‘you could ask me to be your sugar-daddy—I’m sure we could arrange a mutually enjoyable exchange of favours….’

  Nora’s brief flirtation with sexual sophistication went up in flames as she wondered what favours he had in mind. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! I—You—Y-you’re too—’

  ‘Perverted?’ he breathed into her stuttering mouth. ‘Insulting?’

  ‘Young!’ she blurted, and went crimson at his deep chuckle, a hot charge running through her nipples where they were pressed against his vibrating chest.

  The sensation increased when his arm went around her back, only her braced hands preventing their upper bodies from melting together.

  ‘Well, I confess I’d be a virgin in the role,’ he admitted silkily, ‘but there’s a first time for everyone—isn’t there, Nora?’

  ‘Yes. I mean—no! I don’t want you to play any role.’ An X-rated vision of a cruel grey-eyed sultan and his languishing favourite suddenly revisited her imagination, causing her freckles to join up with rosy guilt.

  ‘Shame!’ His knowing grin damned her for a bare-faced liar. ‘I could have delivered you an Oscar-winning performance.’

  ‘For acting or special effects?’ she muttered through her blushes.

  He made another deep sound in his chest, half laugh and half groan. ‘We do seem to have a rather special effect on each other, don’t we?’ The hand on her bottom moved down to cup one taut rounded globe, lifting her more tightly into the heavy fullness of his groin. ‘What do you think we should do about it?’

  She shuddered. The hot thrust of his desire ignited an answering fire deep within the core of her being. A molten heaviness gathered low in her abdomen, sending thick spurts of scalding excitement pulsing through her body, a turbulent mixture of fear and delight that threatened to burst the flimsy barriers of her control.

  ‘I don’t know…’ She tried to remember all the reasons she should resist Blake’s potent allure, but they seemed to be slipping from her increasingly hazy mental grasp.

  He would be a dangerous enemy, but Nora had an uneasy premonition that he might be an even more dangerous friend! Despite all the suspicion and mistrust that lay between them, Blake made her feel things that she had never felt before, not even with Ryan. Her comfortable life had been thrown into chaos and the painful emotional upheaval was proving oddly liberating. She had wanted Ryan, but was beginning to realise that she had never really needed him….

  ‘I can’t think properly—’ she gasped, arching her throat as Blake nuzzled into the warm crease of her neck, surprising her with yet another previously undiscovered erogenous zone.

  ‘Then don’t!’ His rough urgency invited her to surrender to the moment. ‘Just go with what you feel…’

  But feelings could be treacherous, too. They put the generous, loyal and loving at the mercy of the cool-headed and self-serving. Did Blake even know what it was like to suffer betrayal on such an intimate level—to the extent that he could no longer trust his emotions?

  Nora pushed her braced hands against the rock-hard chest, holding his overwhelming physicality at bay with trembling arms. She was right to be nervous. His harsh face was drawn into a mask of arousal, flesh stripped back from the bone, his mouth full and slightly reddened, a dark and hungry look prowling in the glittering grey eyes—the epitome of a dominant male.

  ‘Have you ever made a total fool of yourself over a woman?’ she wondered wistfully.

  He hesitated, eyes narrowing, instinctively wary:
a predator alert for hidden traps.

  ‘No, no—of course you haven’t!’ she said, her voice wry. Blake might be an acknowledged expert in the bedroom but, discounting his teenage crush, he was no authority on love. He had been too well armoured by his ambition to allow himself to be sidetracked by his emotions.

  ‘What makes you so damned sure?’ he pounced. He seemed to have taken her answer on his behalf as a challenge. Perhaps he resented the fact that she could read him so easily.

  ‘Well, you haven’t, have you?’ she said, the confident upward arch of her dark eyebrows making his own plummet to new depths.

  A lethal smile peeled away from his teeth, baring his wolfish determination.

  ‘Maybe that’s about to change…’ he murmured, contracting his powerful arms with an explosive jerk that collapsed Nora back on to his chest. He raked his open mouth over her parted lips, letting her feel the sharp grate of his teeth, forcing her soft squeak of surprise back down her throat with long, deep, drugging kisses that caused an instant sensual overload.

  While the hot male taste of him ravished her senses and stole away part of her woman’s soul, her mind spun sugar candy fantasies from his words. Was he implying that Nora might have the power to make him act foolishly?

  Her heart fluttered up into her throat when she suddenly realised that they were no longer beside the dining table. His soul-stealing kisses had blinded her to the fact that he had been slowly walking her backwards, manouevering her with instinctive skill around the scattered furniture towards the plush blue couches that lay in wait in the shadows of the big room. At some stage her protesting arms had wound themselves around his neck, her fingers fisted in the cool dampness of his midnight-dark hair.

  Dizzy and breathless, she felt her legs bump to a halt against the low arm of one of the couches, the plush velvety pile creating a delicious friction against the sensitive nerves at the back of her knees. She imagined being tumbled back the short distance into the safety net of deep squashy cushions, crushed into the softness by that lithe, hard body, dominated and controlled by his clever hands, which had already slipped under her T-shirt to explore her bare back and the satin smoothness of her seamless bra. His fingers looped under one narrow strap, dragging it to the side so that the cool fabric peeled down from the silky curve of her breast, exposing the taut button of her nipple to his rasping thumb. His tongue dipped and curled enticingly in her mouth as his fingers gently played with his find, drawing the delicate bud out to swollen fullness, milking it of pleasure with smooth, measured strokes, then squeezing with a ruthless finesse that made her shudder in violent delight.