Читать книгу Rising Stars & It Started With… Collections - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 18

HER arms were rigid beside her when she felt the sliver of oil touch her skin.

He traced it across her shoulders; she felt first his fingers then his palms and felt as if she was being gently kneaded, moulded. She attempted to retain her self-possession.

‘You want me to come with you?’

‘Now I know your circumstances, now that I know the truth, we could come to some arrangement that suits.’

‘That suits?’ Her heart seemed to plummet from the dizzy heights it had soared to, and she berated herself for daring to dream, for considering for a foolish moment that he might purely want her.

‘Relax, all I am doing is oiling you.’

‘I don’t trust you,’ she said, for it was true. Neither did her body trust what it might do, for her legs were shaking so much she had to push down her feet to stop them.

‘Lie down,’ Zander said, removing her sunglasses, and she wished he hadn’t for she felt braver behind them.

‘I’ll do your back.’ And as she tensed in resistance, he gave her his word. ‘We will not sleep together again till you trust me,’ Zander said. ‘And you will.’

I won’t, her mind insisted, but he lowered the bars of resistance with velvet-cloaked words and she lay on her stomach and felt the oil drizzle on her back and then the bliss of his fingers.

‘Come with me.’

‘Where?’ His hands were on her rib cage now, stroking in the oil.

‘Anywhere,’ Zander said. ‘Away from Nico. I will take care of you. Whatever he pays you—’

‘You mean you’ll employ me?’ She could feel the tears in her eyes and she squeezed them closed.

‘Turn over,’ he said, and she wanted to see him, she wanted to see him properly so she could understand what he was saying, so she did as he asked.

‘I’m not asking you to work for me.’ He poured oil to her stomach, but not once did his fingers edge towards gold. ‘Just that you do not work for him. I will look after you.’

‘Financially?’ She pushed his hands away, but they were quickly back and she wanted to sob because they changed her, they made the wrong so very right, made all things possible as now they moved to her waist. She wanted him to tear off her bikini and cool her with his mouth. ‘You mean that you’ll pay me to be there for you. There’s another word for that, Zander.’

And he was so loathsome because all he did was smile. He looked at her tears, her anger, and still all he did was smile, because what abhorred her was completely fine with him.

‘If you’re looking for my heart, I warn you,’ he said, ‘I have no heart to give.’

‘Then I don’t want you.’

‘Liar.’

‘I don’t,’ she said, except his hands were at her neck, unfastening the top of her bikini and then moving behind and working the tiny clasp, and so small were her breasts that they barely moved, but she felt sick with excitement and shame. He stared down at them, and she saw the lust in his eyes, the decadent lick of his lips.

‘I can’t …’

‘Can’t or won’t?’ His hands crept to her breasts,

‘Can’t.’ She shuddered, her eyes flashing to his, telling him her truth in the hope it would repel. ‘I’ve told you that I lied. I’m not what you think, I’m not able to travel. It nearly killed me to get away this time.’

‘Because of your mother.’

‘Yes,’ she wept, because the truth should halt his hands, that she was not all she had said she was should have him pause, but his hands moved lower.

‘How about a job with no work hours?’ She frowned up at him. ‘I don’t need another PA, Charlotte.’

‘I don’t want to be kept.’

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘When you’d get the best bits.’ He was more tempting than the devil. She could see the best bits, the thick outline of them in his wet bathers. The lull of the boat beneath her back, the sun on her arms, the cool shade of his body shielding her torso did nothing to cool her.

Was it wrong, to want only the best bits?

Wrong to lie there as he eased her bikini bottoms down, to envisage a future as the occasional lover of Zander?

To go back to her life and not worry about bills?

To look after her mother and know she had this as an occasional reward?

She lay naked beneath him and he was so unabashed by her nakedness, so delighted by her, and wicked too, for he picked up the oil and squeezed it where her thighs were clamped closed, like her mind, trying to keep delicious prospects out, trying not to be seduced again by all Zander Kargas offered.

Except his fingers slid in, welcome if uninvited, and she kept her thighs closed but that offered no deterrent. She bit on her lip as he watched her, and she opened her eyes to the beauty of him and could not say no, did not want to say no, so she said nothing, her silence her consent.

He bought her to orgasm so easily.

Too easily almost. It made her feel ashamed, the kettle he could flick on at whim, not that a man like Zander had any need for a kettle. She wanted it all, even if it was impossible. She could not be at his bidding, for her sanity’s sake.

‘No.’ Her hand was reaching out for him, for the supposed best bit, but she pulled it back for she wanted more, wanted the man that came with it, wanted his heart.

‘You don’t know me.’ She thought of her life back home.

‘I don’t need to.’

And it was cruel but it was his truth.

She could play dress-up once maybe twice a month, escape to a fabulous hotel.

Inhabit a small corner of his life.

And it would be beyond cruel, Charlotte realised.

He did not offer escape. Instead, Zander offered prison, for she would be locked for ever with feelings she could not release. That was what held her hand back.

That made her say no.

‘I can’t.’ She was completely honest. ‘I want more than that.’

‘There can be no more.’

‘There has to be.’

‘I don’t understand what you want.’ He was brutally honest. ‘We have known each other one weekend. Isn’t it a bit soon to be demanding for ever?’

‘That’s not what I’m saying.’

‘What, then? I am offering you a chance for us to get to know each other better and to remove from you the division of loyalty you have working for Nico. I don’t give out rings, Charlotte. I’m offering you now all I will ever give.’ He made it completely clear, and she could only admire him for that—he warned her upfront that he would break her heart, and for Charlotte it made the final choice painful but easy.

‘Then I choose to live with my head in the clouds. To believe that one day—’

‘Someone better than me will come along.’ It was his trump card and he played it. He was possibly the only man who could ever play it, for he had driven her to the edge in bed, and to the deepest places in her mind; he was exquisite and beautiful and there could be no better, for her heart had met his on that first phone call and they would forever be joined. He was the best, and it almost killed her to stay strong as he looked down at her naked, flushed body, a body that had just come at his command, and even think there could be someone better.

‘He might,’ Charlotte said.

‘I told you—you blush when you lie. You know there can be no better than what we have.’

‘And do you retain exclusive rights?’

‘Of course.’

‘Do I get the same privilege?’ She watched as his tongue rolled in his cheek. She would rather be alone than share him and would go no further with this ridiculous conversation. She was stronger than she’d known, stronger even than Nico, for she could do what his identical twin could not—she could end the painful contact with him, could give up now the hope that things might one day change.

‘Can you take me back now, please?’

She stood. Putting on a bikini seemed too complicated with a head that was spinning and hands that were shaking, so she fled down below, pulled on her new clothes from her new bag, and went back to her old heart.

To the one that had the dream that life could one day be different,.

That he was somehow waiting.

And clearly it wasn’t a dream that Zander shared, for as she sat on a bed she would never sleep in, she heard the engine, felt the movement of the boat as Zander took her back to shore.

Zander spent the hour sailing towards Xanos wrestling with his thoughts.

He sailed the yacht past Lathira, the place his brother had been raised, and then he aimed towards Xanos, to the hell he had hated. Yet it was with new eyes he saw it now.

He saw the beach where he had met her, where they had walked and talked.

He saw the balcony of Ravels where they had kissed and the blackened windows where he had held her.

He saw his island through different eyes, new images made by Charlotte.

He had hurt her, had assumed she could take it, had not recognised her innocence, for he had none himself. He had hurt others too—he had looked at the land he had transformed with no thought to its history, or the people.

The seagulls were loud as the boat neared land, swirling overhead and finally daring to swoop onto the deck, screeching as they squabbled over the remnants of the meal, eating with far more relish than Charlotte had the delicacies he had ordered for her. Still they squawked for more, still, when they should be full, there was hunger, greed that was never satisfied—like his endless quest for a revenge.

For the first time he saw a future that was different, one that did not stink of the past, one that was better, one where he could be with her.

Maybe he did have a heart to give.

Maybe there could be trust.

Someone there for him, someone who did not leave.

He needed to think, he needed the safety of dry land and the solitude of his room before he made the most difficult decision of his life. Then she came up to the deck in shorts and a T-shirt, her hair down and her eyes shielded by glasses again.

‘It was a lovely offer, but completely impossible, even if you did give out rings. You don’t know my life …’

He wanted to, though.

For the first time he wanted someone in a way he never had. He wanted to know her, about her, to be there for her, to accept the baggage that came with her, instead of hurling it back to defend a black heart.

The sun must have been too strong, he thought. The sky was orange and he wanted it black. He wanted a safe, dark world that was bitter, but he was tired of strangers on his pillow.

‘Here.’ He handed her the signed contract of sale for the land that Nico wanted. He could not read her expression behind her dark glasses, but from the shake of her hand when he spoke, he guessed that she understood, for with his signature she was no longer obliged to see him for Nico’s sake.

‘Meet me.’ He wanted her now, but he made himself wait. Till he was sure, till he had talked himself out of it perhaps …

Till the time was right.

‘Ring Nico when we get back. Tell him you have my signature.’ Then he looked at her and he tried for haughty, for assuming, for the arrogance that usually dripped from each word, but instead his eyes implored. ‘Meet me tonight, not on behalf of Nico. Hear what I have to say.’ And he turned his back to her, for more than anything he hated weakness. ‘Meet me for dinner.’

He was a skilled seducer, Charlotte reminded herself. He had said, and would again, anything to get her to his bed.

It was hard to remember the hurt, though, when there was something else in his eyes.

‘I don’t know.’ She was truly scared, not of him but of how he made her feel, how easily she believed in him when she had sworn that she never would again.

‘Please be there.’

‘If I’m not?’

‘Then I’ll know,’ Zander said, and he took off her glasses and looked deep into her eyes. ‘Do we say goodbye here?’

He was choosing to kiss her, Charlotte realised.

He chose to pull her into him to serve as a constant reminder. He kissed her better than the first time and maybe for the last time; he kissed her with his mouth and she felt it with her heart. ‘Please …’ He dropped contact for he had to think, but once he had done that, everything would change.

Change can be good, Zander thought as he looked into the blue that could perhaps forever entrance him.

The same can be good too, Zander mused as he thought of her head on the pillow beside him from this night for ever. ‘Meet me tonight.’