A Secret Seduction
Myriad half-formed, disconnected thoughts flitted through her head as she stared at his hand, noting with a tightening in her chest that he still didn’t wear a wedding band. His brown hands were strong, the fingers long and tapering. Her weirdly heightened senses could make out the slight calluses on his palms. The more she tried not to think about them gliding over her skin, touching her, the more space the images took up in her head.
She squeezed her eyes closed.
Her loss of control could only have lasted a fraction of a second but it felt like a lot longer. When, a moment later, she was able to meet his eyes, what she saw there answered one question—he remembered.
She didn’t fall apart. Instead she manufactured a frown as if she were struggling to place him and then widened her eyes and nodded as though she had retrieved the memory she was searching for.
She rewarded herself with the faintest of smiles.
‘Alex Arlov.’ He tipped his sleek head and to her intense relief released her hand. How could I ever not have seen how arrogant he is? She grabbed a napkin from a passing tray and wiped it against the heel of her hand.
‘The name seems familiar...’ She gnawed lightly on her full lower lip, pretending to search her memory before producing a bright smile and pausing to stretch the moment, hoping like hell he was worrying she was going to out him. If it weren’t for Jas she would, and to hell with people knowing what a total fool she was.
But he didn’t look concerned, just vaguely amused, as he elevated one dark brow. ‘That happens to me all the time—an instantly forgettable face.’
And so full of yourself, she wanted to scream as she smiled back, unable to repress a shudder as she looked directly into his ice-blue dark-framed eyes.
She willed herself to relax. Let it go, she told herself, life moves on. He’s just a landmark moment, not a threat.
Her life had moved on, and, if time hadn’t completely healed the wounds, it had allowed her to see things from a different perspective. She had made a mistake, but that mistake had given her Jasmine; this man had given her a gift and he didn’t know. Jas didn’t know either, didn’t know who her father was and one day... Did she have to tell him?
‘Are you enjoying island life, Miss...?’ He arched a brow and studied her. Her features had lost some of their youthful softness, revealing the truly lovely bone structure of her face. She was, he recognised, one of those women who would only improve with age, perfect bone structure compensating for the slight blurring of features as the years passed.
Angel could see his mouth moving, a mouth that was a miracle of stern sensuality, a mouth she had dreamed of. But all she could hear was, You’re married. Pride had been the only thing that day that had prevented her from crumbling when she had heard him speak the words that had crushed her, words that had turned what she had thought was beautiful into something nasty and sordid.
She blinked and struggled to focus as he repeated himself. Paul, the advertising executive who had followed Alex across the room, caught the question and said, ‘We’re all on first-name terms here—aren’t we, Angel?’
Reminded of a puppy dog eager to please, she flicked a glance his way. She felt sorry for the man, but not as sorry as she felt for herself.... This was a nightmare.
Breathe, she told herself. You’ve coped with worse.
Such as once she had got back to her room in the university residence, when she had locked the door and stood under a shower for forty minutes but still hadn’t been able to wash off that feeling of self-disgust, shame and the bitterness of disillusion.
Finally she had stopped indulging in the orgy of misery and given herself a stern talking-to.
‘What are you going to do, Angel? Stay in here for ever?’ Wiping the steam off the mirror, she had glared at her tear-stained face. ‘Your problem is you’re a dreamer, a stupid dreamer. You wanted deep and meaningful, you wanted to wait, you wanted the first time to be with someone who made you feel special. Well, you didn’t get the prince—you didn’t even get the frog!’ She quite liked frogs. ‘So what? Big deal, just suck it up, Urquart.’
It had been good advice then and it still was.
Her chin lifted. ‘Angel Urquart, and I’m not actually here to enjoy myself, just to work.’ She failed to inject any warmth or animation into her voice, but she managed to deliver the comment with composure. You’re doing well, Angel, she told herself as she clenched her fingers tight, driving her nails into the softness of her palms.
Now he wasn’t touching her she was able to channel some cool of her own. The cool only went skin deep but that didn’t matter. What mattered was showing the cheating, lying bastard that there was nothing he could do to hurt her; she had suffered the infection and built up a natural immunity.
‘I hope you’ll find a little time in your schedule to enjoy what we have to offer, Angelina.’
The predatory gleam in his heavy-lidded eyes shouldn’t have shocked her and definitely shouldn’t have produced a hot ache at the juncture of her thighs but it did both.
Why surprise? she asked herself. You jumped into bed with him after five seconds six years ago. Why wouldn’t he file you under the heading marked convenient, easy, or most likely both, since you’ve clearly fulfilled both from his point of view?
Pushing away the wave of shame, she embraced the anger coursing through her veins. Smiling, she shook back her dark hair and adopted a dumb expression.
‘It’s Angel, and I’m not actually big on multitasking.’ She was confident she could crush his expectations. She might even enjoy doing so. ‘You have a beautiful home.’
A home, a wife and to her knowledge at least one child, her child. But for all she knew there could be more, possibly a dozen children...? Did Jasmine have half-sisters, half-brothers...? Not a possibility Angel had considered before, and not one she wanted to consider now!
‘This isn’t my home. It’s a hotel, Miss Urquart.’ He paused, the line between his dark brows deepening as he scanned her face. She had gone pale, her full pink lips were blanched of colour and she looked as though she was about to pass out.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ She heard him ask with more irritation than concern. The rushing sound in her ears made her think of the ocean, which along with a couple of continents was what she needed to put between this man and her before she felt all right. But failing that... She snatched a glass from the tray of a passing waiter, but didn’t hold on to it for long.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?’
Her green eyes fluttered wide and she stared with utter astonishment as in a seamless motion he tipped the contents of the untouched glass he had taken from her fingers into a flower arrangement. Her jaw dropped as she felt her temper fizz. This man was totally unbelievable!
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ The words didn’t deliver the verbal punch she had intended. Instead her voice had a breathy, vulnerable quality. Teeth clenched, she continued to glare up at him, dabbing her tongue to the beads of sweat that clustered along her upper lip. She rubbed a hand across her forearm and found her skin was moist but cold.
He did not enter the debate but, after subjecting her to a narrow-eyed scrutiny, concluded with an air of resignation, ‘You need some fresh air.’ When he had contemplated her horizontal, a dead faint and ambulances had not entered the picture. So much for a little light flirtation. Alex preferred the woman in his bed to be sober and fully conscious!
He kept telling her what she needed—that night he had known what she’d needed before she had, and he had given it to her. She stiffened as she felt a hand in the middle of her back.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘You are repeating yourself and, in reply... Excuse me...’ The small group parted like the sea in response to his soft-voiced request. ‘I am saving you from yourself.’
You’re six years too late for that, she thought, deciding that struggling to evade him would just draw people’s attention. As it was she was conscious in the periphery of her vision of a few curious looks as they moved towards the door.
Outside he spoke to a hovering member of staff and a chair appeared. He pressed her down into it. ‘Better?’
She nodded and turned her face to the sea breeze. ‘It was a bit warm in there.’ Actually it was warmer outside but she no longer felt as if the room were closing in on her. Once her head stopped spinning and the tightness in her chest eased she would be fine. ‘Thank you. Don’t let me keep you from your guests.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU ARE BEING irritatingly childish.’
This lofty condemnation brought her head up with a jerk...mistake! Angel closed her eyes and waited for the world to stop spinning, opening them a moment later when she found a glass placed at her lips. She responded to the terse instruction to drink; the alternative would have been choking because he did not have what could be termed a gentle bedside manner!
She turned her head away and mumbled, ‘Enough.’
‘You are welcome.’ He watched as she dabbed the back of her hand to the excess moisture on her lips and his focus slipped as the memory surfaced of them softening and parting beneath his. The muscles in his angular jaw tensed and the sinews in his neck stood out as he forcibly ejected the memory, but not before he heard the throaty sound of her plea—please...!
That husky plea had been all it had taken to silence the voice in his head, the one that had been telling him he ought not to be doing this.
He had done it and he wanted to, needed to, again. The struggle then like now had been to keep his passion on a leash. Something about this woman seemed to tap directly into his primal instincts.
‘What happened in there?’
My past came back to bite me. ‘Other than you overreacting,’ she accused him, not willing to admit how close she had come to passing out in public. ‘I’ve told you it w—’
His cold eyes narrowed with irritation as he cut across her impatiently. ‘It wasn’t the heat.’
She narrowed her eyes and fixed him with a glare. Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity would have tactfully gone along with the heat excuse and not pried and prodded. ‘Do we have to have a post-mortem? I got a bit light-headed. It happens. Now I feel much better. I’ll have an early night.’
Perhaps the problem was that she had had too many early nights... The thought did not improve his frame of mind. While he was not looking for a long-running thing—there seemed little point waiting for boredom to set in, as it always did—he did like exclusivity.
He was not a possessive man but sharing was a deal breaker.
‘It does not happen for no reason.’
Angel started to feel guilty as he continued to scrutinise her face as though he would find the answer there.
‘Will you stop looking at me like that?’ she husked. ‘You’re making me feel like a criminal. I haven’t broken any law.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I think I’d have remembered.’
‘Have you taken anything?’
Still taking breaths of fresh air to clear the muzziness in her head, she flashed him a confused look, then, as his meaning suddenly dawned on her, lost all colour. The heat returned in a searing wave of outrage until her smooth cheeks glowed.
And the insults just kept coming!
‘You’re accusing me of being a...a...a...junkie!’ And then he had the cheek to look astonished when she got upset. This man really was outrageous, she fumed.
He felt relief. Her outrage might be a case of the lady protested too much but his instincts told him otherwise. ‘No need to overreact.’
She clenched her teeth. The pat-you-on-the-head, patronising quality of his drawled response made her want to scream.
‘I’m simply excluding possibilities before I call a doctor.’
Her eyes widened this time in horror. ‘I do not need a doctor and I’m not overreacting. I’m reacting to you insulting me, interrogating me...’
‘Insult...?’ he drawled, his ebony brows lifting at the suggestion. ‘It is not exactly unknown in the world you work in for people to...dabble.’
Her mouth twisted into a scornful smile. ‘Now, that’s what I admire—a man who isn’t afraid to generalise or judge from his secure position of moral superiority.’
Alex blinked. She had claws and a mouth on her, this woman—a million miles from the two-dimensional sexy purring kitten of his memory. A slow, contemplative smile spread across his lean, hard face. These changes didn’t make her any less attractive, just more of a challenge.
And he had always liked a challenge, or he had once. Recently he had gone for the easy option way too often, as it came with the lack of emotional commitment that was essential to him. To commit yourself to someone and risk losing them, risk losing part of yourself... A man who invited such a thing more than once was to his mind insane.
‘You are clearly feeling better. Actually I was thinking prescription drugs. They can react badly when combined with alcohol.’ He tilted his head in the direction of the room they had just exited. ‘And you were knocking it back a bit in there.’
So not only was she some sort of junkie, he was also calling her a lush!
‘Thanks for the advice.’ Her green eyes glowed with contempt, aimed partly at herself. This hypocritical self-righteous creep was the man she’d waited for? She gave a short bitter laugh. Had she really been that young and stupid?
‘For the record, being a model doesn’t mean I’m part of some seedy subculture. I’m used to people making assumptions—the odd male who thinks that because I’ve advertised underwear I have no problem with being looked at as though I’m a piece of meat on a slab...’ She left a significant pause and had the pleasure of seeing a muscle in his lean cheek clench. ‘Not one of the perks of the job,’ she conceded. ‘However, you have taken insults to a new low. For the record, if I want advice on the clean life I wouldn’t come to you, Mr Arlov. You’re a...a... Not a nice man.’ Not nice? You’re so hard core, Angel. ‘You’re a rodent!’
As she finished on a breathless note of quivering contempt a memory surfaced as strong as it was unbidden: the ferociously strong lines of his face relaxed in sleep, the long eyelashes softening the angle of his carved cheekbones. Not vulnerable and not soft but more... She had never been able to put a name to the quivering sensation in the pit of her stomach. No more could she now, though she felt it again.
Alex’s nostrils flared as he sucked in an outraged breath. He liked feisty but there were limits. ‘And you base this opinion on what?’
‘That you’re a rodent?’ She was already regretting the rather limp animal analogy. If there was an animal she would have likened him to it would have been a wolf, with its piercing eyes, sleek, lean body and dangerous bearing. An illicit little shiver slipped slowly like a cold finger down her spine.
‘I’ve always thought rats got a bad press, but not nice? I’m hurt,’ he mocked. Alex could live without being thought nice.
‘Rodent works for me, but what would you call a married man who sleeps around? For the record, and to save you the effort, these days it takes more than being told someone needs me to get me into bed!’
Even if the person saying the words had a voice that was sin itself.
Six years was a long time and people change but this...! ‘Thanks for the heads up,’ he murmured, adding without missing a beat, ‘What does it take?’
She shook her head, playing dumb because it was on the tip of her tongue to admit not much. It was true, and she was ashamed she had recognised him as her moral Achilles the second he had touched her. It had shocked her so deeply it had triggered the... Whatever it had been, Angel remained reluctant to assign a name to what had happened. She was perfectly willing to accept that panic attacks existed; they simply didn’t happen to her.
‘What does it take to get you into bed these days?’ Whatever it was it would definitely be worth the effort. He had not been this hungry for a woman in a long time—if ever.
‘I’m curious—do you work at being offensive or are you naturally gifted that way?’
‘You didn’t answer my question. On second thought, don’t. Let me get there by myself. It will be more satisfying than being fed the answer.’
The colour flew to her face. The effects of his purred remark on other parts of her anatomy were too mortifying to think about. ‘You’re not getting anywhere with me.’
‘Oh, well, you know what they say—it’s all about the journey not the destination...’ A saying that had always struck Alex as particularly ridiculous, never more so than in this context. He had every intention of reaching, enjoying and extracting every atom of pleasure from his destination. The anticipation of sinking into her warm body and losing himself was strong enough to taste.
She shot him a look of utter disdain. ‘Do you ever listen to anything anyone says?’
He elevated a dark brow and gave a slow smile. Without a word he hooked his hand behind her head and dragged her face up to his. The action was deceptive, the kiss druggingly deep, his tongue sliding between her parted lips while his firm mouth fitted perfectly over hers. Angel registered the heat that was everywhere; she heard the almost feral low moan but didn’t connect the sound with herself.
When it stopped and she managed to prise her heavy eyelids open she found herself looking up into a pair of blazing cosmic-blue eyes. So dizzy she staggered, she gave a choked gasp of horror and stepped backwards, once, twice and amazingly stayed on her feet.
‘The truth?’
As if she were emerging from a nightmare—one she had shamefully fully cooperated with and not struggled to escape—Angel fixed her blazing eyes on his face, swallowed a bolus of acrid self-disgust and wiped her hand across her pumped-up plump lips. Where was her self-respect? Where was her pride? When this man touched her she stopped being... She stopped being herself and became someone that scared her, someone whose actions she couldn’t predict.
She took a deep restorative breath; she would not fall apart. Yes, he’d like to... But no way. He was acting as if it was no big deal and so could she. It was just a pity the message of defiance had not reached her trembling limbs or core temperature.
‘You,’ she contended contemptuously, ‘wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you!’ Rich coming from someone who wasn’t telling him he had a daughter, or couldn’t admit she wouldn’t fight too hard if he decided to kiss her again. She lowered her eyes over the shamed acknowledgment and heard his throaty chuckle.
‘The truth is I’m more into body language.’ Especially when the body in question was as lush and perfectly formed as hers. ‘Words can lie...whereas there are some things that you can’t hide....’
Her head came up with a guilty jerk. ‘I’m not trying to hide anything.’ The moment the words left her lips she knew silence would have been more convincing.
‘For instance, your pupils have expanded so much there is just a thin ring of colour left.’ Her eyes were the purest green he had ever seen flecked with tiny pinpoints of swirling gold. ‘You really are a very good kisser.’
So long as his observations did not drop below neck level she could deal. ‘Kissing is not hard.’ It was the knowing when not to that was hard. ‘It’s a...a...reflex,’ she flung back.
His ebony brows lifted. ‘I’ve never heard it called that before.’
Hating the smugness in his voice, she snapped. ‘You think you know body language? Well, study this,’ she invited, pointing to her own face, pale now and set into a cold mask. ‘I was ill in that room because I saw you and was reminded of an episode in my life I’m not too proud of, in fact I’m deeply ashamed of.’
‘That’s your problem, not mine.’ Shame and guilt were not to his mind something to be yelled about. They were things you lived with; they were the price you paid for mistakes.
Angel drew in a deep shuddering breath and revealed the ultimate unforgivable crime that she laid at his door. ‘You turned me into the other woman.’ Her voice dropped to an emotional whisper as she realised. ‘You turned me into the person I never wanted to be—my mother!’
Alex’s jaw clenched but his anger almost immediately faded. He was very good at reading body language but it did not require his talent to interpret the expression in her emerald eyes as shock.
So Angel had mother issues? That was not his problem, and he had no interest in helping her work her way through them. He refused to recognise an uncharacteristic urge to draw out more details, an urge that directly contradicted his determined lack of interest.
Six years, Angel, but you got there in the end. How could she not have seen it before? ‘Madre di Dio!’ she mocked softly, then gave a little laugh.
The throaty exclamation distracted him. ‘Italian?’
She blinked as it took her a few moments to return from wherever she had gone. ‘Half.’ She didn’t elaborate. It seemed, Angel thought grimly, that she had done too much show and tell already!
Economy of detail was something Alex appreciated in his lovers, actively encouraged, but even he liked a whole sentence.
Well, at least the Latin connection explained the golden glowing looks, and possibly the temper too, though if he said so she would probably not waste the opportunity to accuse him of generalising.
‘I’ve heard of people rewriting history but this is the first time I’ve seen it firsthand. You’re acting as though you were some passive victim. The way I recall it you were an equal and active participant, so the outraged-virgin act is a bit over the top.’ Although amazingly she retained the ability to blush like one—the colour that washed over her cheeks deepened the pale gold of her skin with a rosy sheen. ‘This can’t be the first time you’ve bumped into an old one-night stand?’
Her eyes slid from his as she swallowed the insult, though she doubted he had intended it as such. He wasn’t making a moral judgement. That was just who he thought she was. It was easier to let him continue to hold that opinion than tell him the truth.
What would be his reaction, she wondered, if she came out with, ‘You’re the only man I’ve ever slept with’? She almost laughed at the image of his imagined incredulity. Or worse, he might ask her the question she’d asked herself a thousand times—why him?
How could she begin to explain to him something she didn’t even understand herself?
She made herself look at him and felt her insides shudder as their eyes connected. ‘One like you.’
In case he decided to construe her comment as a compliment she added coldly, ‘One who made me feel...cheap.’ Feeling this was an admission too far, she dodged his gaze and missed the expression that flickered across his lean face. When she raised her eyes his face was stone. ‘I may just be a model, which clearly in your eyes makes me a pill-popping bimbo—’ she took a deep breath and made a conscious effort to control her indignation ‘—but I don’t sleep with married men!’
Her shrill accusations might not have touched him but this last quiet comment did. ‘I’m not married now.’
Was that meant to make her feel better? Or was it a lie to get her into bed? Angel told herself she didn’t want to know; all she wanted was to get out of here and away from him.
‘Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?’ she drawled. ‘I really hope she took you for a lot of money...’ His bank balance was probably the only vulnerable area he had, she thought bitterly.
‘She’s dead.’
The blunt pronouncement drew a gasp from Angel, who immediately felt like a total bitch. So this was what it felt like to have the rug pulled out from under your feet.
During the ensuing silence the mortified colour flew to her cheeks and then receded. What was she meant to say that didn’t sound trite and insincere?