Helen Lacey – Chasing Summer: Date with Destiny / Marooned with the Maverick / A Summer Wedding at Willowmere (страница 17)

It all sounded so reasonable. And he wasn’t even dressing it up with false words of love.

She stared at him with a mixture of desire and wariness, mindful that he had changed tack on her somewhere, substituting the masterful macho play with a more seductive, subtle tactic. And it was working, too, slipping past her defences to make her melt inside. The temptation to lean against his bare chest, to give herself up to his will, was overwhelming. A low moan escaped her lips before she could smother it. And then it was too late, her head moving of its own accord to nestle into his warm brown throat, a sigh of surrender wafting from deep within her breast.

Mike didn’t say a word. He merely swept her up into his arms and carried her from the penthouse, down the hall, and into his own place, kicking the door shut behind him. Only then did he look into her eyes, shocking her with the violence of emotion burning in their black depths.

‘If you change your mind again,’ he warned darkly, ‘I’m likely to strangle you!’

With that, he continued on into the bedroom, once again kicking the door shut behind him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I CAN’T possibly be doing this, Salome thought as Mike laid her down on a bed in the dark. When he snapped on a bedside lamp, her eyes darted nervously around the dimly lit room, which was as exquisitely and blandly furnished as Ralph’s main bedroom, and just as impersonal. Not a photograph or a memento in sight. Her eyes returned to the man who was now sitting on the side of the king-size bed, watching her with a closed expression on his face. And it came to her that he was virtually a stranger.

What did she know of him? Only that he was in his early thirties, unmarried, lived here in this penthouse, and owned an Italian restaurant. Everything else she’d gleaned about him had been sheer gossip or speculation.

Their conversation over dinner the evening before had been desultory to say the least, betraying nothing of his background or his private life. For all she knew he could be part of that network of Italian immigrants whose businesses were merely fronts for organised crime. Drug-running and the like. His restaurant was in King’s Cross, after all—the crime centre of Sydney. She had read of such men—men who made and lived by their own rules. Powerful, ruthless men.

The image of a white-faced Charles giving Mike a sick look jumped into her mind, and her stomach turned over. Good God, surely he couldn’t be a member of the Mafia?

Much as she immediately rejected that idea as one of an over-active imagination, her thoughts had alarmed her, making her want to jump up from the bed and run for her very life. But she lay there, stiff with expectation and apprehension.

‘You’re nervous,’ he said, almost accusingly.

She gulped down the lump in her throat and turned her face away from those probing black eyes. His hand closed over her chin and turned her back, where she was astonished to see a wry smile on his lips. ‘They say women are hard to understand,’ he murmured, his thumb moving in soft, tantalising circles along her jawline. ‘But you, my lovely Salome, are the hardest of them all.’

He bent and covered her mouth with his, moving his lips back and forth across hers with slow, unhurried movements. She sucked in a startled breath as the most incredible wave of delight rippled through her. His head lifted a few inches, his eyes revealing a measure of surprise. ‘You’re amazing,’ he whispered. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say this was your first time...’

He kissed her again, this time teasing her mouth open and caressing the tip of her tongue with his. Desire seized Salome in its tenacious grip, making her moan deep in her throat.

Again Mike straightened to gaze frustratedly at the dazed expression on her face. ‘I can see why men go crazy for you,’ he muttered, his fingers drifting down her throat to trace the ‘V’ of the dressing-gown, making her shiver when he lingered on the valley between her breasts. ‘You are whatever they want of you at the time. In the lift, a wild wanton, here, a virgin on her wedding night, tentative and sweet, amazed yet delighted by your responses. How do you do it, Salome?’ he said, half admiringly, half derisively. ‘How many years of practice did it take to master the fine art of erotic fantasy?’

There was no time for an answer, even if her hurt mind could have thought of one. His mouth swooped to claim hers again, and this time it was hungry and demanding, his lips applying a bruising pressure, his tongue thrusting deep into her mouth, pushing aside her renewed dismay, leaving room for little but the crazed leap in her senses.

‘God!’ he muttered when at last he tore his mouth away, smouldering black eyes locking on to stunned green ones. Salome gave a soft whimper when his fingertips moved across her dark, swollen lips. ‘I’m sorry,’ he rasped. ‘I’m not usually so brutal.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said huskily. ‘I liked it.’

Liked it? What an outrageous understatement! She’d loved it, adored it, ached for it! She could think of nothing more exciting than having this man ravishing her.

Aroused eyes lifted to run up one of the strong male arms that imprisoned her, landing on his broad bare chest. The desire to touch the taut, finely honed muscles was overpowering, her right hand lifting to trail a tentative but sensuous path across his skin, her nails raking lightly over one of his male nipples.

The intensity of his shudder surprised her, as did the heat of the flesh beneath her fingers. With a rush of raw, mindless passion, she wrapped both her arms around his waist and pulled herself up till her face was pressed against his chest, opening moist lips on to his skin, sliding them across the hot, hard wall of muscle till it closed over where her nails had just been.

He shuddered again, then groaned as her tongue darted forward to tease the hard nub, encircling it slowly then nipping it with her teeth as he had done to her in the lift. Suddenly, strong hands grabbed her shoulders and pushed her away from him. ‘You must stop,’ he rasped. ‘Stop!’

She stared at him in confusion, her heart pounding madly. What had she done wrong?

‘I think you’d better revert to the shy virgin,’ he growled, letting her go to run agitated hands through his hair.

Salome cringed visibly, thinking she had just made a dreadful fool of herself.

‘God, woman, don’t look like that! Do you think I wasn’t enjoying it? Hell, I was enjoying it too much. The truth is, I haven’t had sex in bloody ages and, if you keep that up, this’ll be all over before it damned well starts!’

Salome stared at him, shocked at how much his confession of recent celibacy pleased her. But then came the cynical realisation that, for a virile man like him, a fortnight was probably ages. She glanced around at the huge bed with its cream satin sheets and myriad pillows, and she knew with absolute certainty that many women had been here before her, had lain eagerly beneath his gorgeous male body, had accepted his hungry kisses, had been thrilled by his overt sexuality.

Her jealousy was instant and savage, cutting a sharp path through her chest up into her brain. Her eyes snapped back up to him, and she wanted to tear his beautiful face apart, wanted to scream at him that he was never to make love to another woman ever again. That he was hers from this night forward. Hers and hers alone!

The intensity, the insanity of her feelings shook her. Surely this couldn’t be just normal sexual frustration she was suffering from? This was something far deeper, far more devastating.

‘What is it?’ Mike said sharply.

She expelled the breath she had been holding in a trembling gasp. ‘Nothing...nothing...’

‘Tell me,’ he urged, and drew her to him in a breathtakingly close embrace, his lips pressed feverishly to her forehead. ‘What is it that frightens you so about me? Why didn’t you want to let me finish making love to you earlier on? Why?‘

She shook her head frantically from side to side. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘I can’t! It’s all too confusing.’

‘What’s confusing?’ he insisted, little knowing that the hot, stroking hands on her hair, her neck, her back, were the most confusing of all, because they kept bringing wave after wave of sensation that was slowly obliterating her capacity to reason. Surely she wouldn’t feel like this in any other man’s arms, would she? It didn’t seem possible. Yet...if it was only Michael Angellini who could do this to her, then what was it exactly she felt for him? Sexual infatuation? Obsession? Lust?

Salome refused to embrace the word ‘love’. Even if her feelings for Ralph had finally begun to die, her bruised, battered heart wasn’t ready, or capable, of loving another man yet, and certainly not a man who had nothing but contempt for her. Perhaps she was acting this way out of some sort of crazed revenge against the hurt perpetrated by her husband. Perhaps this was a rebound thing. She didn’t know any more.

‘Everything’s confusing,’ she groaned. ‘Me... this...you...’