Читать книгу The Gold Collection - Ким Лоренс, Maggie Cox - Страница 39

IT WAS almost midnight when they bid Chester and Carolyn Warren goodnight and drove back to the penthouse. Freya wished she were tired but to her dismay she felt wide awake and filled with a wild, reckless energy. Those few moments of madness on the dance floor with Zac had inflamed her senses and left her body aching for his full possession—but it was going to be disappointed.

She intended to go straight to her room the moment they entered the apartment, but Zac’s butler, Laurent, greeted them with a tray of coffee and petits fours that he had prepared specially for their return. ‘I’d really like to go to bed,’ she muttered to Zac as he ushered her into the lounge in the wake of the butler.

‘And upset Laurent?’ His eyebrows raised a notch. ‘You’re a brave woman.’

Stifling a groan, she dredged up a smile and accepted a cup of frothy cappuccino from the butler. The last thing she needed right now was the additional stimulation of caffeine, she thought gloomily as she watched Zac drain his cup in two gulps before he crossed to the bar and poured himself a cognac.

‘Would you like a nightcap with your coffee?’

‘No, thank you,’ she replied hastily. What she needed was something to knock her senseless for the next twelve hours and prevent her disturbing fantasies about Zac, but, although getting blind drunk was tempting, she decided that her loss of control tonight had been embarrassing enough to last her a lifetime.

She stirred her coffee and glanced up at Zac, who was standing at the window staring out into the darkness. ‘When did your father die?’ she asked him quietly, recalling her conversation with Chester Warren. ‘Chester said it was two years ago, which was when we met, but you never said anything and I had no idea you were grieving.’

Zac shrugged dismissively. ‘My father died nine months before I met you and my grief was a private matter which was nothing to do with you or our relationship.’

He sounded so cold, so clinical, that Freya shivered. Zac kept his life compartmentalised into separate boxes and had clearly never considered allowing her into the box marked personal. ‘But if you’d told me I might have been able to…I don’t know—’ she broke off helplessly ‘—help in some way.’

‘How?’ he demanded tersely. ‘You couldn’t have brought him back and I did not need help. I dealt with my grief.’ He had neither looked for, nor wanted, sympathy, he brooded grimly, and he had been determined to deal with the loss of his father in his own way, which for the most part had been to block it out of his mind and get on with his life.

After his twin sisters had died a few months after birth, his mother had sunk into a deep depression that had lasted for most of his adolescence. He had been shocked by the power of love and had viewed it as a destructive emotion that had wreaked havoc on his parents’ lives, and he had decided that he would never be held hostage to his emotions.

When his father died, his mother had been distraught and once again he had felt helpless in the face of her overwhelming grief. But Freya’s soft smile and unashamedly eager sensuality had been a welcome relief from the surfeit of Yvette Deverell’s emotions. He hadn’t wanted to talk about grief or loss; he had wanted to forget everything and enjoy her glorious body—until he’d discovered that she hadn’t been giving herself exclusively to him.

Zac’s shuttered expression warned Freya that he did not welcome her intrusion into an area of his life that he had never spoken of before, but she pushed on doggedly, determined to learn more about this man who was to all intents and purposes still a stranger to her. ‘Chester told me that you felt you had to work particularly hard to prove to the Deverell board that you would be a worthy successor to your father. If you had explained why you practically lived at your office, I would have understood,’ she insisted.

‘But instead you grew bored of waiting for me and looked elsewhere for sex.’ Zac gave a harsh laugh. ‘Mon Dieu, I satisfied you every night, but it wasn’t enough, was it, chérie? You were insatiable, you wanted me on hand morning, noon and night, and when I didn’t give you enough attention you acted like a spoilt brat.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Freya defended herself. ‘I wanted us to have a normal life like other couples, to spend weekends together and the occasional evenings rather than you coming home at midnight and taking me to bed like I was a…a whore you paid to pleasure you.’ She set down her coffee-cup with a clatter, her whole body tensing in rejection when Zac strode across the room and stood, towering over her.

‘But that’s exactly what you were,’ he said savagely. ‘I kept you as my mistress and paid for every conceivable luxury you could want, in return for your…services.’ The withering contempt in his eyes as he stared down at her made her feel sick and she shook her head wildly.

‘I never asked you to buy me clothes and jewellery. I never asked you for anything, apart from your time. I wanted you, Zac, not the things you could give me,’ she whispered, but he snorted impatiently and dropped down onto the sofa next to her, trapping her against the cushions.

‘I know exactly what you wanted, and when you decided that you weren’t getting enough from me, you slept with your foppish artist.’

‘I did not sleep with Simon.’ Hurt and frustration exploded inside her and she lashed out at him, only to have him capture her hands and drag her across his lap.

‘The bodyguard saw you,’ he said with a steely calm that alarmed her more than if he had shouted at her. His eyes were hard and utterly implacable and she gasped in shock when he caught hold of the straps of her dress and dragged them down her arms with such force that the material ripped. The bodice of her dress instantly slipped down, leaving her breasts exposed, and when she fought manically to free herself from his hold he pushed her so that she was lying flat on her back.

‘Zac, don’t,’ she pleaded fearfully, terrified not of him but of herself and the certainty that she would not be able to resist him. His barely leashed savagery only added to her feverish excitement and, although she hated herself, she could feel her body’s treacherous response when he skimmed his hands over her ribcage and cupped her breasts in his palms.

‘Don’t deny that you want me, Freya,’ he warned softly. ‘Not after what happened on the dance floor tonight. You don’t know how close I was to spreading you across the nearest table and taking you in front of a room full of onlookers,’ he growled, his voice thick and his accent heavily pronounced as he relived those few seconds when she had trembled in his arms. The shocked confusion in her green eyes had driven him to the edge and since then his arousal had been a throbbing force that he was impatient to assuage.

‘That shouldn’t have happened,’ she muttered, her face flaming. ‘It was just a horribly embarrassing physical reaction. I haven’t dated anyone since we split up. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t when I had Aimee to care for. But I have the same urges as anyone else.’ Although it seemed that only Zac could satisfy those urges, she conceded bleakly. If he could bring her to a climax simply by dancing with her, what chance did she stand if he decided to make love to her properly? she wondered despairingly. But it no longer seemed to matter; his hands were gently moulding her breasts and now his thumb pads were stroking across the tight peaks of her nipples, backwards and forwards until the pleasure was almost unbearable and she felt a sharp tug of desire.

This was dangerous territory and she should beat a retreat, her brain warned, but a curious weakness seemed to have invaded her limbs and she could do nothing but watch as he lowered his head and flicked his tongue across one sensitive crest. With a low cry she put out her hands to push him away, but her wayward fingers strayed to his shirt buttons and worked them free before she pushed the material aside and revelled in the feel of his warm golden skin beneath her fingertips.

It had been so long since she had touched him. She loved the solid strength of his chest and powerful shoulders—loved him, whispered a tiny voice in her head. She was his, totally, and she murmured her approval when he transferred his mouth to her other breast and drew her nipple fully into his mouth. The exquisite sensation built on the need that had begun on the dance floor and was now a greedy, clamouring ache to feel him inside her.

Zac stared down at her flushed face and muttered something beneath his breath before he claimed her mouth in a kiss of pure possession, drawing a response from her that she could no longer deny. A tremor ran through his big body and he tore his mouth from hers to drag her dress over her hips. He loved watching her unguarded response to him and held her gaze as he drew her knickers down and pushed her thighs apart with deliberate intent.

Her eyes darkened to the colour of a stormy sea and she made a little half murmur of protest when he ran his hand through the soft blonde curls and then parted her and slid his fingers deep into her.

Freya held her breath, torn between the need for him to continue his wickedly intimate caresses and the dictates of her pride, which were telling her that she must stop this madness now, before it was too late. But Zac was a master of seduction and his skilful fingers continued to move inside her, while his thumb pad stroked with delicate precision over her ultra sensitive clitoris, building her excitement so that she twisted restlessly and tried to control the delicious spasms that were threatening to overwhelm her.

‘Zac…’ His eyes were focused on her face and there was something shockingly erotic about the way he was watching her while he pleasured her. She was going to die of shame in the cold light of day, but his fingers were moving faster in a sensual dance and with a groan she tipped her head back as wave after wave of incredible sensation tore through her. Only then did he lower his head once more to capture her mouth in a slow, drugging kiss, his tongue dipping between her lips as he mimicked the actions his fingers had performed seconds before.

‘Tell me, chérie, am I the only man who can turn you on like that, or will anyone do when you’re desperate—Brooks, for example?’ Zac’s coldly mocking voice shattered the sexual haze and Freya tensed as pain ripped her apart. His opinion of her hadn’t changed; he still regarded her as unfaithful and his readiness to believe the worst of her was unbearable. Her desire drained away, leaving her so cold that her teeth chattered, and when his hand moved to the zip of his trousers she felt sick with misery.

‘Don’t,’ she pleaded through numb lips, her eyes huge and overbright in her white face. ‘I don’t think I could bear it. You’ve made your point, Zac, and we both know that I’m pathetically incapable of resisting you. But if you make love to me tonight I think I might hate you almost as much as I hate myself.’

For a few mindless seconds, Zac was tempted to ignore her. He had never wanted a woman the way he wanted her, never been held at the mercy of such a gnawing hunger that caused a cramping pain in his gut. He was in agony, damn it, and he knew he could make it good for her too. But the glimmer of her tears was getting to him, even though he despised women who were able to turn on the waterworks whenever it suited them. Freya was not one of those women, he conceded grimly, and the stark vulnerability in her eyes unearthed a flare of compassion in him that he’d never known he possessed.

With a furious oath he jerked away from her, his nostrils flaring with the effort of controlling his urge to take her. ‘Cover yourself and get out,’ he growled, flinging her dress at her before he strode over to the bar. He’d known from the moment he stood by her hospital bed that she would be trouble and he couldn’t fathom what madness had made him bring her back here. The day couldn’t come too soon when he would be able to dismiss her from his life for ever, he thought savagely as he slugged back his drink and poured himself another. But when he swung round to tell her, she had gone.

Freya leaned over the cot and brushed her lips over Aimee’s velvety soft cheek. The toddler’s lashes were already drifting down and within seconds she was asleep, worn out from an energetic afternoon playing with Jean Lewis in the roof-garden.

Jean had become a firm friend of both mother and daughter and they would miss her warmth and kindness when they returned to England, Freya mused sadly. And that day was drawing ever closer. It was over a week since Zac had brought them to Monaco and any day now he would receive the results of the paternity test. She predicted that his reaction would not be good and had already decided that she would take Aimee home immediately.

‘I thought she’d drop off quickly,’ Jean said cheerfully when Freya tiptoed from the nursery. ‘She loves playing outside, although she was very cross when I insisted that she wear her sunhat.’

‘You’re so good with her,’ Freya said with a smile. ‘I thought she was going to have a tantrum about the hat, but you managed to distract her.’

Jean chuckled. ‘I’ve had years of practice dealing with toddler tantrums, and really Aimee is so well behaved. She’s an adorable child.’ She paused and then added, ‘What a beautiful dress. You look lovely Freya.’

‘Thank you.’ Freya glanced down at the elegant cocktail dress that had been one of her favourites when she had lived with Zac. The green silk crêpe de Chine clung to her slender curves and the colour looked good against the light tan she had acquired while playing in the sunshine with Aimee.

Zac was hosting a dinner party tonight and had curtly informed her that, as his PA was still feeling unwell, he required her to act as his hostess. She was looking forward to the evening with as much enthusiasm as a trip to an abattoir. Relations between them had improved marginally since their last explosive confrontation, but only because she avoided him whenever possible.

It wasn’t difficult; he had always left for his office before she was up and he returned late—or not at all, she thought grimly. Common sense told her he was bound to have a mistress in Monaco. He possessed a high sex drive and, although he had respected her wishes and held back from making love to her after the evening they had spent with the Warrens, she had been in no doubt of his frustration.

But there were plenty of women who would willingly satisfy his needs and all week her imagination had kept her awake at night as she had pictured him with some nubile beauty. Jealousy was a corrosive emotion. She hated herself as she lay awake each night listening for his key in the lock and hated him more when dawn brought with it the bitter realisation that he had spent the night in another woman’s bed.

The results of the DNA test couldn’t come soon enough, she thought miserably. Living under the same roof as Zac was destroying her self-respect. She had no idea what he would do when he discovered that she hadn’t been unfaithful to him, and she no longer cared, she realised. Possibly he would offer to pay maintenance for Aimee, but it was unlikely that he would want any kind of contact with his daughter and with luck she would never have to see him again.

She found him in the lounge, staring out at the spectacular view over the bay. In a formal dinner suit he looked more gorgeous than ever. The expertly tailored jacket moulded the formidable width of his shoulders and when he swung round she noted the way his brilliant white shirt accentuated his olive-gold skin.

‘Freya.’ he studied her in silence for a few moments, his brows drawn into a slashing frown. ‘Mon Dieu! You have a nerve wearing that dress. Did you do so expressly to anger me? Because if so, you’ve succeeded.’

Startled by his barely leashed aggression, Freya shook her head. ‘You told me to wear the clothes I’d left behind when you…’ she bit down on her lip as bitter memories came hurtling back ‘…when you threw me out.’

‘True, but I didn’t expect you to parade around in the very dress you were wearing on the night you tried to seduce me into believing the child you were carrying was mine,’ he hissed contemptuously.

Had she really worn this dress on the worst night of her life? Freya’s brow knotted as she tried to remember, but all she could recall was Zac’s savage condemnation of her. At the beginning of that fateful evening she had dressed to please him, but after it had all gone so spectacularly wrong she had fled to her dressing room and hastily changed into her jeans before he had ignominiously evicted her from the penthouse.

‘I didn’t try to seduce you,’ she said, her temper flaring when she saw the acrid condemnation in his eyes.

‘Non?’ He gave a harsh laugh as he strolled towards her with a lithe grace that reminded her of a panther stalking its kill. ‘I remember the way you flew into my arms the moment I stepped through the door. We were supposed to be going out to dinner but you clung to me. I couldn’t resist you, chérie, and you knew it, but you overplayed your hand when you thought you could fool me into believing your lies.’

He was so close that she could feel the anger emanating from his body and when she tilted her head to look up at him, the stark emotion in his eyes made her tremble. Passion and fury—together they were a volatile mixture that filled her with trepidation and an undeniable excitement that had been building all week. She recognised his hunger; saw the way his eyes darkened with desire, and when his head descended she stood stock still, like a hare trapped in the headlights of a speeding car, waiting for the inevitable.

Voices from the hall shattered the haze of sexual tension and he jerked back from her, muttering a savage oath beneath his breath. ‘My guests are here and it’s too late for you to change now. But be aware, chérie, that every time I look at you tonight I’ll be imagining you with Brooks.’ His deliberate crudity made her wince, but when she attempted to move away from him he slid his arm around her waist and held her in a vice like grip. ‘Why aren’t you wearing the support bandage on your wrist?’ he demanded roughly.

‘I thought I’d manage without it for a couple of hours.’ The butler, Laurent, was heading down the hall followed by Zac’s guests and, despite feeling as though her heart had been put through a pulping machine, she forced a brittle smile. ‘At least the necessity to go and put it on again will give me a reason to excuse myself from your vile company.’

From that moment on the evening became a hellish ordeal that Freya longed to end. Fortunately no one attending the dinner had known her during the few months she had lived with Zac and awkward explanations were avoided. His guests were frighteningly sophisticated but friendly—although in some cases, too friendly, she thought darkly when she caught sight of him deep in conversation with an attractive brunette. Mimi Joubert had arrived alone, but from the easy familiarity she shared with Zac it seemed likely that she would not be returning home tonight.

Freya swallowed the bile that burned her throat and forced herself to smile at the man at her side. Lucien Giraud had also arrived at the dinner party unaccompanied, but Freya was sure that had been through choice rather than because he could not find a date. He was good-looking and charming and had flirted with her outrageously throughout dinner. Fearful of appearing rude, she had called on all her acting skills to respond warmly to him, but her laughter had disguised the misery that swamped her every time she felt Zac’s eyes on her. The blistering contempt in his gaze reminded her of his taunt that he was picturing her with Simon Brooks and she felt the crazy urge to jump onto the table and shout out her innocence. It would certainly be the talking point of the evening, she thought bitterly.

By midnight, she’d had enough. She was fast running out of patience with Lucien’s none-too-subtle attempts to place his hand on her thigh—the man had an ego the size of Mount Everest—and she glared at him when he leaned close and whispered in her ear.

‘So, Freya, what will it take to persuade you to have dinner with me?’ he murmured seductively, clearly convinced that the route from the dining room to his bedroom would be completed in minimum time.

‘More than you can imagine,’ Freya replied sharply, trying to edge along the sofa when she felt his gaze settle on her cleavage. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me,’ she said as she slapped away his roaming hand and jumped to her feet. ‘My arm is beginning to ache and I need to take some painkillers. It was nice to meet you,’ she lied, stifling an impatient groan when Lucien stood and captured her hand.

‘It has been a pleasure for me also, Freya,’ he replied, lifting her hand to his mouth with a theatrical flourish that caught the attention of everyone in the room. ‘I hope very much that we will meet again.’

Not in this lifetime—if she could help it, Freya vowed silently as she repeated her excuse for leaving the party to the other guests and hurried from the room, acutely conscious of Zac’s gaze burning like a laser between her shoulder blades. As his hostess she supposed she should have remained on hand until his guests departed, but watching him smile and flirt with Miss Joubert was sheer agony and she couldn’t stand another five minutes of it.

Despite Freya feeling bone-weary, sleep proved elusive and two hours later she gave up her restless tossing beneath the sheets and headed for the kitchen to make a milky drink. She had heard Zac’s guests depart soon after she’d left the party, but the light streaming from beneath his bedroom door and the muted sound of a woman’s voice caused her to pause in the hallway. Obviously not everyone had gone home. The image of Zac and the gorgeous Mimi Joubert filled her with sick misery and she stumbled on towards the kitchen feeling as though she had been kicked in the stomach.

Oh, God! How could it hurt so much? After all this time and all the terrible accusations he had flung at her? She wanted to cry like a baby and tears blinded her as she poured milk into a saucepan and set it on the hob to heat. Of course he had a lover. There had probably been a steady stream of sophisticated beauties in his bed during the past two years—but the stark reality that he was at this moment making love to another woman was more than she could bear.

She mopped her wet face frantically with a paper towel. It was time she toughened up and stopped being so pathetic. She had coped with rejection all her life—she should be used to it by now, she thought bleakly, recalling the years of her childhood when she had tried so hard to win her grandmother’s love. But Nana Joyce hadn’t wanted her any more than her mother had done, and Zac had never made any pretence that he loved her. It was her own stupid fault that she had given him her heart and it should have come as no surprise that he had treated it with callous disregard.

Too late she heard the hiss of scalding hot milk as it frothed onto the hob. With a cry she grabbed the saucepan handle as a smell of burning filled the kitchen and, to her horror, the smoke alarm activated.

‘What the hell are you playing at? I thought you were in bed.’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’ Freya jerked her gaze from Zac’s furious face and ran cold water over the ruined pan while he reached up and switched off the alarm. His hair was ruffled and his robe loosely fastened, as if he had leapt up from bed and dragged it around him. He looked indecently sexy and the knowledge that he was naked beneath the black silk caused her heart to thud unevenly.

‘That’s no reason to wake the rest of the household,’ he said tersely, his eyes narrowing as he noted the streaks of tears on her face.

‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ she muttered miserably, unable to dismiss the picture of him tearing himself out of Mimi Joubert’s arms. ‘I think the pan’s salvageable if I scrub it.’

‘Leave it.’ He snatched the pan that she had filled with soapsuds and, infuriated by his highhandedness, she grabbed it back again.

‘Let me do it. Go back to bed. You don’t want to keep Miss Joubert waiting,’ she hissed beneath her breath, and then gasped when he forcibly removed the saucepan from her hand and spun her round to face him.

‘What?’ His tone was deceptively mild, but the glinting fury in his gaze warned that he had reached the limits of his patience.

‘Miss Joubert—I know she’s staying with you,’ Freya murmured uneasily, trying to edge away from him and finding herself jammed up against the worktop. ‘I don’t care,’ she told him sharply, terrified that he might think she was jealous. Her cheeks burned when he continued to stare at her speculatively, as if he could see inside her head. ‘We’re both free agents and you can sleep with who you like.’

‘Merci, chérie,’ he murmured sardonically, ‘but I have no plans to leap into bed with a business acquaintance I met for the first time a few days ago.’ He paused for a heartbeat and then said softly, ‘It was clear from your behaviour with Lucien Giraud this evening that you do not feel bound by the same constraints of moral propriety.’

‘Meaning what, precisely?’

‘Meaning that you were all over him like a rash,’ he growled, his face twisting in distaste. ‘You’re not even fully recovered from your injuries, and yet you waste no time trying to seduce another wealthy lover. Perhaps you are already preparing for the outcome of the DNA test,’ he sneered, ‘and are intending to sell yourself to Giraud in return for financial security for you and your child.’

His cruel taunt pierced her heart and in an agony of hurt she brought her hand up to meet his cheek with a resounding crack. For a few seconds she stared at him in horror, and then closed her eyes as a wave of shame and nausea swept over her. She deplored physical violence, but how dared he insinuate that she was no better than a whore? The blazing fury in his eyes warned that she had pushed him too far and with a cry she shot down the hall, but had only gone a few paces before he caught hold of her and swung her into his arms.

‘Take your hands off me!’ She pummelled her fists against his chest and gasped when he marched determinedly towards his room. ‘If you’re planning a threesome, you can damn well think again.’ Burning up with embarrassment, she screwed her eyes shut when he strode through the door and deposited her on the bed. Surely she had plumbed the depths of humiliation? she thought wildly, convinced that Zac and his beautiful bed-mate must be laughing at her.

But when she cautiously lifted her lashes there was only Zac staring down at her—no hint of amusement on his face, just stark, primitive hunger and an implacable determination in his eyes that sent alarm feathering down her spine.