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Summer of Surrender
Zara Stoneley
Sex is the only thing they have in common. Total surrender the name of the game.James had it all. Good education. City job and a wife he would have been willing to die for. Their motto had been work hard, play hard, but she’d pushed the boundaries too far and he’d walked. Became the man he felt he needed to be. Detached. In control.Free spirit Kezia lives each day at a time; sharing, loving and giving are unconditional. And sex is part of the sharing.When fate leaves James and Kezia trapped together for the summer, her openness is an invitation he just can’t resist. The attraction is instant, the sex all-consuming. And as their fantasies become reality, James begins to realise that willing surrender is a far different pleasure to forced submission…
Summer of Surrender
Zara Stoneley
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Contents
Copyright (#ud09d230c-beb7-5fb2-8558-79e39581c12e)
Dedication (#u7858cf7d-6db6-5a1b-b3bc-305439217a5d)
Chapter 1 (#u98cc5786-1e88-514f-b6ef-9b0cde3b2897)
Chapter 2 (#u510fdfeb-018d-5808-a90a-a3e343bbb599)
Chapter 3 (#u0cc68477-f3ae-5eb4-98d3-cd778bc96957)
Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Zara Stoneley (#litres_trial_promo)
About HarperImpulse (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
HarperImpulse an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2013
Copyright © Zara Stoneley
Cover Images © Shutterstock.com
Zara Stoneley asserts the moral right
to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International
and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
By payment of the required fees, you have been granted
the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access
and read the text of this e-book on screen.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted,
downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or
stored in or introduced into any information storage and
retrieval system, in any form or by any means,
whether electronic or mechanical, now known or
hereinafter invented, without the express
written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © November 2013
ISBN: 9780007556571
Version 2014-09-26
Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
To my family, who have always encouraged me to follow my dreams, and my very own sexy hero who has provided the inspiration and support to turn them into reality.
Chapter 1 (#u363e2053-f275-58a6-ba57-6c0093a6744a)
‘Shit.’ Whoever said climbing gates in a maxi dress was possible had got it wrong. Seriously wrong. Or maybe no one had been stupid enough to say it.
Kezia Martin clung on to the top of the wobbling timber and considered her options. Rolling off was a definite possibility, except that the driveway looked like it had a high ‘ouch’ factor. Although she was a million miles from sophisticated, even she knew that a gravelled face was not a good look. But there didn’t seem to be an option B. Apart from the ‘split your dress at the seams’ one, and she did actually like this dress quite a lot. And as it made up fifty per cent of her going-out wardrobe, she wasn’t ready to sacrifice it, and neither did she want expose her thighs – or worse – to the world.
Not that there was much of the world here to see anyway. The monosyllabic taxi driver had dropped her off by a five-bar gate in the middle of nowhere, and scarpered before she had the chance to say she’d changed her mind. Not that she really wanted to face another trip in his car.
She’d actually been feeling pretty positive, if knackered, when she’d staggered out of the train station. And even the one battered taxi that was parked in the otherwise deserted rank didn’t deflate her too much. The driver had taken her bag without a great deal of enthusiasm, shoved his newspaper onto the passenger seat and raised an eyebrow when she’d read out the address, which seemed a bit rude. He’d muttered something that she could have sworn sounded like ‘you don’t look like one of them,’ but she could have got that bit wrong. Then he’d stoically ignored her and driven further and further into the countryside before unceremoniously dumping her, grabbing his fare and driving off in his belching car. Which was doubly rude.
She would have been more worried, but the back of beyond was probably a good place to be right now. A good place to start again. And anyway, she was too darned tired to really think about anything, apart from the comfy bed that just had to be waiting for her. It had to be.
Or maybe not. There wasn’t an intercom, not even a bell, just the gate, firmly fastened with a chain that wouldn’t have looked out of place attached to an anchor. She’d tried hollering and she’d tried waiting, though not for that long since patience wasn’t her greatest virtue. Then she’d decided that there obviously wasn’t a guard dog, and she was too tired to sit in the road any longer. At least on the other side she might find somewhere to sit down and wait. It had to be better than staying on the outside. So she’d thrown her rucksack and guitar over the gate and planned on following them. Which involved hitching up the dress to just over her knees and taking advantage of the generous slit down one side. The problem was there was no slit on the other side, so once she was astride the gate, things got tricky. Whichever way she tried to move there was the tell-tale sound of the snapping of stitches. Bugger.
She would ring for help, but her mobile was in her rucksack. On the ground, right where she was heading. Which left two options: praying to God for help, or making an even bigger fool of herself. She shut her eyes, which always helped with thinking. And praying.
‘What-’ there was a God, with a wicked sense of humour seeing as she just about fell off the precarious perch, ‘-are you doing?’ Well, maybe not a God. She turned as far as she could, cricking her neck in the process, and could just about make out a tall, lean figure. The low sun behind him made everything but his outline pretty much indiscernible, so she screwed up her eyes to try and focus on him. Which didn’t help.
‘Are you going to give me a hand, or just stand there?’
‘No to the first, yes to the second.’ He didn’t just stand there, though. He took a couple of steps nearer, so that she could make out quite clearly that this wasn’t some mysterious God, just a mysterious mortal. With a soft voice, which had an undertone that was making her skin prickle.
‘Very helpful, not.’ It was muttered under her breath, but she had the distinct feeling, from the look on his face, that he’d heard. Kezia didn’t believe in love at first sight, or hate either. But right now this guy was making her think that the second was maybe an option. He stood, arms folded, feet astride and just looked through narrowed eyes while she clung to his gate. Well, she assumed it was his gate, seeing as he was on the other side.
Black t-shirt, black pasted-on jeans, black hair, black face. Or at least a not-very-pleased face. Inscrutable was probably the word, inscrutable in quite a brooding way, which made her feel even more of a dishevelled mess.
‘This is private property.’ His tone was mild, but he was obviously used to people taking notice of it. Which riled her. She’d been invited here, for fuck’s sake.
‘What do you think I am? Stupid? I did actually realise that, for a start the bloody big padlock’s a bit of a giveaway. But, I was told to come here, today, by Marie.’ And I feel bloody silly having a conversation while I’m wobbling on a gate. ‘You know? Marie, who runs the place?’ Okay, sarcasm was the lowest form of wit, but right now it worked for her.
‘We’re shut.’
‘Well that’s bloody obvious by the mega-duty chain. But I. Have. Got. An. Appointment.’ She spoke slowly, hoping it would help.
‘Sorry, there are no appointments until September.’ He took a step back, arms still folded across his body and looked like he was about to go.
‘You have got to be joking!’ Kezia couldn’t believe it. He stood there and replied, calmly ‘we’re shut’. Just like you would say a shop is shut. And she’d just travelled over a thousand bloody miles for this! He didn’t look like the kidding type, though. Closer up he looked like the strong, silent, ‘I’m sexy and I know it’ type. Except the corner of his mouth had tipped slightly into a shape that looked vaguely promising; almost a smile. All she had to do was work out how to humour him, and still get in. ‘You can’t be shut, buster. I might not be sure I want to be here and you sure as hell don’t look like you want me to be. But I am. And I’m going to do this if it kills us both. So do me a favour and either help me down or shut your eyes, because me climbing over isn’t going to be a pretty sight.’
‘Is that your stuff?’ He nodded his head towards her well-worn rucksack and battered guitar case.
She nodded. Two long strides and he’d laid his hand on the guitar case, and she just knew what he was going to do. Throw it back over, and then probably her with it. ‘Don’t you dare.’ Nobody touched her guitar. The rucksack, yeah, but not the guitar. She made a grab to stop him, forgetting she needed to hang on, heard the unmistakeable sound of tearing fabric and fell. Shit, torn dress and face. Shit, shit, shit. Except she didn’t hit the ground.
How anyone could move that fast she didn’t know. But his warm hands were on her waist, which meant her feet hit the ground before her body. ‘Oo.’ She was inches from him, and his hands were still on her body and it didn’t feel like any touch she could remember. It was a lulling touch, a warmth that held a kind of promise that she didn’t quite recognise.
And she still had her mouth open. She snapped it shut. He let go, in his own time, but didn’t move away.
‘Are you okay?’
She nodded. Her tongue didn’t work. It was stuck to the roof of her mouth because this man was pure unadulterated sex. He was surrounded by an aura that was screaming out ‘touch me, want me.’ She reached out tentatively without thinking. And then he moved. One step away. Out of arms’ reach.
‘I’m…’ Well, she was red hot for one. All over. The first flush was down to the way he held her, the second was please-earth-swallow-me-up embarrassment.
‘You are?’
‘I’m Kezia Martin, how do you do? I do have an appointment, and please don’t throw me back over the gate. You see I talked to Maria when we were in Capri and she said that if I came here now, well as soon as I’d finished in Italy, which she knew was two days ago, she said she’d be able to—’
He held up a hand. ‘Whoa. Do you always go at that speed? Slow down, you’re giving me a headache.’
She was babbling, she knew she was babbling. It was a bad habit she had when she felt stupid or embarrassed. She would always talk too much to cover for herself.
‘So…’ He paused. Studying her with eyes that appeared black in the dimming light, he looked her over with a lazy smile that brought out a rash of goose bumps over her arms. No, it couldn’t be his smile; smiles didn’t do that. It had to be the fact that it was getting cooler. She wrapped her arms across her chest and tried to ignore the prickle of her nipples through the fine silk of her dress. His gaze drifted briefly over her body and she shivered involuntarily. Her hair had to be a mess, her dress had a rip somewhere – she wasn’t quite sure where yet, and she daren’t look. Her body was on full alert, as though any moment now she expected him to pounce.
‘You’re cold.’
If it’s the nipples you’ve spotted, that’s nothing to do with the temperature. ‘I’m fine.’ There was a slight tremble in the words and she swallowed, trying to clear her throat, get back to normality and break the spell that he’d woven.
He ignored the words. Looked her over slowly again and seemed to come to an abrupt decision.
‘Seeing as you seem to be on the wrong side of the gate now…’ He paused. Wrong side, right side, depends on whose saying the words, mate. ‘You might as well come and explain in the house.’ He picked her rucksack up, swung it over one shoulder as though it was feather-light (which she knew for a fact it wasn’t as she’d hauled it across half of Europe, frequently cursing the fact that it was crammed full with most of her worldly goods) and she made a grab for her guitar, which he seemed to know was off limits. Then he walked off with an effortless stride that ate up the ground silently.
She felt like a dog scampering after him, trying to keep up, across a yard she barely had time to take in, except for the fact that it had to be the cleanest yard she’d ever seen. Down a path between immaculate flowerbeds that led to a slightly faded, but obviously once-imposing, farmhouse.
He slowed briefly, to push the large oak door open wider, and had marched across the worn flagstones, dropped the rucksack and was pouring coffee before she’d even had chance to get her bearings. Or catch her breath.
‘So?’ He passed her a mug, then placed his own on the table between them and waited. For an explanation. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Thing was, why did she have to explain at all? He obviously lived here, and he obviously, from his reaction, knew Marie. But now she had her hands wrapped around a warm mug and her heart rate had returned to normal she was beginning to feel that hate, well, dislike, again. Who did he think he was? At least at this distance, with a table between them, the intensity had dwindled to a gentle simmer.
‘I run the business with Dan and Marie.’
Ah, he was a mind-reader. His long, slim finger stroked around the rim of the mug. She took a moment to look at him properly. He was lean, toned rather than muscled-up, and every part of him seemed to be essential, nothing wasted, nothing extra. His arms were defined, as an artist would define their model. He seemed to possess a quiet strength, holding back, contained and yet on the edge, as though a single command could unleash his power. His hair was dark to the point of black, as were his eyes – it hadn’t been a trick of the failing light, even here under the artificial glare there was an almost unnatural depth to the colour. His features were aquiline. Enigmatic, hidden. She felt that shudder again and decided to stop examining him so closely.
‘Marie offered me a job.’ She took a sip, concentrating on the steam rising from the liquid. ‘So, I’m here.’
‘And she’s not.’ His voice was gentle, as though he didn’t want to frighten her.
