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‘Well, sometimes a man doesn’t want an independent woman,’ he ground out. He couldn’t believe he’d just said that, but he had. Or that he’d caught her by the arm to feel the soft tremble of flesh where his fingers burnt so delectably against her bare skin. ‘Are you always this damned stubborn?’
Something in the heated frustration of his question made Sabrina’s blood sing with a glorious inevitability, and she had the sense of being led towards something which defied all logic. It was liberation at its most intense and powerful, and she was no longer heartbroken, bereaved Sabrina. For one enchanted moment she stood poised on the brink of something magical.
She smiled. ‘Only if I need to be.’
There was a long and dangerous pause. ‘But I’m used to getting my own way,’ he told her steadily.
‘I know you are. It shows.’
She looked down at his tanned fingers which still lay against her white skin, and he let his hand fall, perplexed by his own actions. He was a man whose reputation hinged on being in control—so why was he acting as if he were auditioning for the leading role in a Western movie?
‘Was I being unbearably high-handed?’ he asked her, missing the satin feel of her skin beneath his fingertips.
She took one last look at him as she stepped into the water-taxi which had slid to a halt beside them. Not unbearably anything, she thought. You wouldn’t know how to be. ‘Only a little.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll see you tonight at eight.’
And Guy was left staring at the back of her bright blonde head, his heart thundering with a mixture of admiration and frustration.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_61f8e184-751d-52bb-9dc4-63d50b898cf3)
SABRINA was twenty minutes late. Guy had never had a woman keep him waiting in his life and he couldn’t decide whether to be irritated or intrigued. He glanced down at his watch for the umpteenth time and actually began to wonder whether he’d been stood up.
But then he saw her crossing the square, wearing some slinky little silver-grey dress with a filmy silver stole around her pale shoulders, her legs looking deliciously long in spindly, high-heeled shoes.
Sabrina spotted his tall, brooding figure straight away, as if he had been programmed to dominate her whole horizon. He was wearing a pale grey unstructured suit which did nothing to disguise the hard, muscular body beneath. And, outwardly at least, he looked completely relaxed, but as she grew closer she could see a coiled kind of tension, which gave him the dark, irresistible shimmer of danger. He looked completely relaxed, but there was no mistaking the watchful quality which made his grey eyes gleam with subdued promise.
She had very nearly not come tonight, lifting the telephone to ring Guy’s hotel more than once, telling herself that this was fast turning into something she hadn’t planned. Something she wasn’t sure if she could handle.
Or stop.
But something had prevented her cancelling—something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Maybe it was the memory of that first, glorious sight of him. Leaving behind the knowledge that if she were never to see him again, then the world would never seem quite the same place.
His smile widened as she approached, but he made no move towards her. Let her come to me, he thought. He wanted to watch the way she moved—her hips unconsciously thrusting forward, the fluid sway of her bottom. He imagined those hips crushed beneath the hard contours of his own, and swallowed. Come to me, baby, he thought silently. Come.
‘Hello,’ Sabrina said breathlessly, but something in the darkening of his eyes seemed to have robbed her of the ability to suck air into her lungs.
‘Hello.’ So. No blurted little excuses for being late. No shrugged or coy reasons. Her carelessness sharpened his desire for her even more intensely and he felt his senses clamour into life. ‘Where would you like to eat?’
There was a new, dangerous quality about Guy tonight, Sabrina thought. A danger which should have frightened her, but instead filled her with a sense of almost unendurable excitement. And inevitability. ‘You know the city far better than I do,’ she said huskily. ‘You choose.’
‘OK,’ he said easily, and for a moment felt the penitent shimmer of guilt. As if he hadn’t just spent an hour under the hammering power of the shower, deciding exactly where he wanted to take her. He had opened his mouth to the torrent of water which had beaten down on him, his body growing hard with frustration as he remembered that Sabrina had stood naked beneath these same icy jets.
Except that he doubted whether she had needed an ice-cold shower to ward off a desire which was stronger than any desire he could remember.
The restaurant was close by and its menu was famous. It was private and discreet but not in the least bit stuffy; he wondered whether she would comment on its proximity to his hotel, but she didn’t.
And it wasn’t until they were seated in the darkened alcove he had expressly requested that he relaxed enough to expel a long, relieved breath. She was here, he thought exultantly. Sabrina was here. Her hair was all caught back in a smooth pleat at the back of her head and he wanted to reach out and tumble it all the way down her back.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said slowly.
The way he was looking at her made her feel beautiful. She savoured the compliment, held onto it and tried it out in her mind. ‘Why, thank you,’ she said demurely.
‘I thought you weren’t coming.’ He couldn’t believe he’d just said that either. Hadn’t the hard lessons of his childhood meant that he’d spent his whole life striving for some kind of invulnerability?
‘I nearly didn’t.’ Oh, God, she thought, please don’t ask me why. Because I might just have to tell you that I knew, if I came, where I might end up spending the night.
‘What changed your mind?’
‘I was hungry.’
He laughed as the waiter came over with the menus, and Sabrina took hers with hands which had begun to tremble. She wondered whether Guy had noticed.
He had. But he hadn’t needed to see her fingers shaking to know that she was working herself up to a fever pitch of sexual excitement which almost matched his own. That was evident enough from the soft line of colour which suffused the high curve of her cheekbones and the hectic glitter of her eyes. The way her lips looked all swollen and pouting, parting moistly of their own volition, the rosy pink tip of her tongue peeping through. And the way the buds of her tiny breasts pushed like metal studs against the silvery silk of her gown.
His grey eyes glittered into hers as she stared unseeingly at the menu. ‘Want me to order for you?’
Strange she should be so grateful for a question which would normally have left her open-mouthed with indignation. ‘Yes, please.’
His eyes scanned the menu uninterestedly. About the only things he felt like eating right now were oysters, followed by a great big dish of dark, juicy cherries—and it didn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to work out why that was.
Guy shifted his chair a little, relieved that the heavy white damask of the tablecloth concealed the first heavy throbbing of desire. Another first, he thought wryly, unable to remember a time when he’d been so exquisitely aroused by a woman without any touch being involved.
He ordered Brodetto di pesce followed by moleche. Dessert he would take an option on. He had his own ideas for dessert…
The waiter brought over a bottle of the bone-dry Breganze bianco, but Sabrina felt intoxicated just by the lazy promise of his smile.
‘I don’t know if I need any wine,’ she admitted.
‘Me neither.’ He shrugged, but he poured them half a glass each and signalled for some water.
Sabrina sipped at her drink, feeling suddenly shy, not daring to look up, afraid of what she would see in the grey dazzle of his eyes. Or what he might read in hers…
‘You know, we’ve spent nearly the whole day together—and I don’t know a single thing about you,’ he observed softly. ‘I’m not used to women being quite so mysterious.’
Sabrina put her glass down. Here it came. The getting-to-know-you talk. A talk she most emphatically did not want to have. She’d been touched by a tragedy which had left her tainted, simply by association. People treated you differently once they found out and she didn’t want Guy to treat her differently. She wanted him to carry on exactly as he was.
She forced a lightness into her voice. ‘What exactly do you want to know?’
Guy narrowed his eyes. Women usually loved talking about themselves. Give them an opener like that and you couldn’t shut them up for hours. ‘It isn’t supposed to be an interrogation session,’ he informed her softly, and then he leaned across the table, dark mischief dancing in his eyes. ‘Why? Have you got some dark, guilty secret you’re keeping from me, Sabrina? Don’t tell me—in real life you’re a lap-dancer?’
His outrageous question lifted some of the tension, and Sabrina found herself smiling back. ‘Much more exciting than that! I work in a bookshop, actually,’ she confided, and waited for his reaction.
‘A bookshop?’ he repeated slowly.
‘That’s right.’ Now it was her turn for mischief. ‘You know. They sell those things consisting of pages glued together along one side and bound—’
‘And why,’ he said, with a smile playing at the corners of his lips, ‘do you work in a bookshop?’
She took a sip of her wine. ‘Oh, all the usual reasons—I love books. I’m a romantic. I have a great desire to exist on low wages. Do you want me to go on?’
‘All night,’ he murmured. ‘All night.’ But then their fish soup arrived and Guy stared at his darkly, wishing that he had known her longer. Wishing that she was already his lover so that he could have suggested that they leave the food untouched and just go straight home to bed. ‘And where exactly is this bookshop?’
Sabrina nibbled at a piece of bread. ‘In Salisbury. Right next to the Cathedral. Do you know it?’
‘Nope. I’ve never been there,’ he said thoughtfully.
She studied the curved dip at the centre of his upper lip and shamelessly found herself wanting to run her tongue along its perfect outline. ‘How about you? Where do you live? What kind of work do you do?’ She thought of the man she had first seen, in jeans and T-shirt. ‘It must be something pretty high-powered for your company to pay for a hotel like that.’
Guy hesitated. When people said that money talked, they didn’t realise that it also swore. It sounded ridiculous to consider yourself as being too highly paid, but he’d long ago realised that wealth had drawbacks all of its own. And when you were deemed rich—in a world where money was worshipped more than any of the more traditional gods—then lots of people wanted to know you for all the wrong reasons.
Not that he would have put Sabrina into that category. But he liked the sweet, unaffected way she was with him. He hadn’t been treated as an equal for a very long time. And if he started hinting at just how much he was really worth, might she not be slightly overawed?
‘Oh, I’m just a wheeler-dealer,’ he shrugged.
‘And what does a wheeler-dealer do?’
He smiled. ‘A bit of everything. I buy and sell. Property. Art. Sometimes even cars. Houses occasionally.’ But there was no disguising the dismissiveness in his voice as he topped her wine up. ‘All pretty boring stuff. Finish your soup.’
‘I have finished.’
She’d barely touched it, he noticed as the waiter removed their plates—but, then, neither had he. And he was still aroused. So aroused that…
Sabrina saw the dark colour which had flared over his cheekbones and suddenly she felt weak. Across the table they stared at one another, and the sounds of the other diners retreated so that they might have been alone in the crowded room.
‘G-Guy,’ she stumbled, through the ragged movement of her breathing.
‘What is it?’ he murmured.
‘The waiter is w-waiting to give us our main course.’
Guy looked up to find the waiter standing beside the table, holding two plates containing crayfish and barely able to contain his smile.
‘Grazie,’ said Guy tightly.
‘Prego.’ The waiter grinned.
Sabrina smoothed her fingers over her flushed cheeks. She didn’t speak until the waiter was out of earshot. ‘Did you see his face?’ she whispered.
‘We’re in Italy,’ he remarked, with a shrug. ‘They’re used to couples displaying…’ he lingered over a wholly inappropriate word ‘…affection. Now eat your crayfish,’ he urged softly.
Like two condemned prisoners eating a last meal, they both silently spooned the crayfish into their mouths. It was fine food, meant to be savoured and enjoyed, but they both ate it quickly, without tasting it. In fact, Guy only just refrained from shovelling it down as if he were on a ten-minute lunch-break.
Sabrina wondered why she didn’t feel shy. Or embarrassed. Why being with Guy in an atmosphere so tense with expectation seemed to feel so right. Something she needed more than anything in the world. She put her knife and fork down with a shaky hand and saw that Guy had mirrored her movements.
‘Shall I call for the bill?’ he queried.
She forced herself to try and respond normally, even though she knew what he meant by his question. ‘Don’t you want dessert? Or coffee?’
His mouth curved. He heard the delicious thunder of the inevitable. ‘I thought we could try somewhere else for coffee.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed with nervous excitement, because she knew exactly what he meant—and wouldn’t a well-brought up girl be frightened by that? Or outraged? ‘I guess we could.’
In a daze she allowed him to drape the wrap around her shoulders, feeling the negligent brush of his fingertips against her bare flesh as he did so, and she felt the breath catch in her throat like dust.
He took her by the hand and led her outside into the starry night, looking down at her with soft, silver light gleaming from his eyes.
‘You’re shivering,’ he observed quietly, tracing a thoughtful fingertip down the slim, pale column of her neck and seeing her tremble even more. ‘Again.’
‘Y-yes.’
He took his jacket off and draped it around her shoulders; the broad cut of it almost swamped her slender frame. ‘Here, take this…’
‘You’ll get cold yourself,’ she objected.
‘I don’t think there’s any danger of that,’ he said softly, and, sliding his arms around her waist, he bent his head to kiss her.
Her heart was blazing as her mouth parted to meet the first sweet touch of his lips. She ignored the half-hearted voice of her conscience telling her to stop this, because who could have stopped this?
He was breathing life into her, bringing warmth flooding back into her veins. As though she had been some cold, bloodless statue and now…now…
‘Oh, Guy,’ she whispered, in a distracted plea. ‘Guy.’ But the words were lost against the honeyed softness of his mouth.
Desire shafted through him like an arrow. ‘Oh, God, yes, Sabrina,’ he ground out, on a sultry note of hunger. ‘Yes, and yes, and yes.’ He brought her closer into his body, up to the cradle of his hips, where the hard, lean power of him was unmistakable. And now it was Guy’s turn to make a harsh little sound. He broke the kiss off with a supreme effort, tearing his mouth away to look down with frustrated perplexity into her disappointed eyes.
‘This is all threatening to get out of hand,’ he groaned, sucking in a shuddering breath which scorched the lining of his lungs. ‘I haven’t engaged in such a public display of passion for a long time.’ He had always liked beds—clean sheets and clinical comfort—so why was he having to swallow down the primitive urge to lead her to the nearest narrow, dark alleyway, pin her up against some ancient wall and do it to her right there…?
She felt no fear, and no shame. Only an overwhelming need to be near him. She trickled a questing fingertip down the proud, hard lines of his face. ‘M-me neither.’
He forced himself to bite out the question, even though it was the most difficult thing he had ever had to say. ‘Do you want me to take you back to your hotel, or would you like to…?’ The word trailed off temptingly.
‘To what?’ she asked softly.
‘To come back with me? We could have that dessert. Coffee. What do you think? Would you like that, princess?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, knowing that he didn’t want coffee any more than she did.
He took her hand and led her through the darkened streets. She felt dizzy with the sense of his proximity but she was so disorientated that he could have been leading her to the ends of the earth for all she knew. Or cared.
It wasn’t until they found themselves back in the grand elegance of his suite, with the hazy gleam of the lamps falling like moonlight on her flushed cheeks, that something of the enormity of what she was about to embark on began to seep into Sabrina’s consciousness. She ought to stop this, she told herself, and stop it right now.
Yet the longer she stared into the mesmerising glitter of those dark-lashed eyes, the harder it was to listen to reason. Because reason was a weak component in the presence of raw need.
And Michael had taught her that nothing was certain. His death had brought the frailty of life crashing home in a way that nothing else could have done. Why, she could walk out of this room right now and something could happen to ensure that she would never see Guy Masters again. And never know the warmth of his embrace, or taste the luxury of his kiss.
She turned her face up to his, but her half-felt protest became a moan of surrender as he drove his mouth down on hers with a hungry kiss which splintered her senses.
He reached out to remove the clip from her hair, murmured his warm pleasure as it fell in a red-blonde gleam around her shoulders. ‘See how your hair glows like fire against your skin. And how your eyes sparkle like pure, clear aquamarines.’
She had never been seduced by words before, had never known their sweet, wanton power. ‘G-Guy,’ she said shakily.
