Читать книгу More Than A Vow: Vows of Revenge / After Their Vows / Vows Made in Secret - Michelle Reid, Dani Collins - Страница 10
ОглавлениеONCE MELODIE REALIZED her fall was inevitable, she let it happen, only splaying out her arms and holding her breath. Above her, through the rippled water, three blurry faces stared. Roman was throwing off his jacket and looking as if he might dive in.
She let herself sink, waiting until her foot tapped the bottom, then kicked herself back to the surface.
What an idiotic thing to do!
But that damned Roman had been throwing her for a complete loop, being all masculine and sexy, sending mixed messages of lust and disapproval, hovering next to her like a raptor, smelling tangy and male. She’d been standing next to him, admiring his build, thinking his voice was too hypnotic, when he’d reached toward her as if he knew she was there, as if he was a lover searching for the hand of his mate.
Her reaction had been startled fear that she’d betray how thoroughly he was affecting her if he touched her. She’d jerked back and...
“Pah!” she spat as she came up for air. “You might want to change the design of that grate before the wedding. Either that or we advise all the women to skip the stilettoes and wear flip-flops.”
Ingrid and Huxley laughed unreservedly. Roman wore a more severe look.
It wasn’t easy to tread water in a narrow skirt. Her second shoe came off as she kicked toward the edge.
Roman squatted as she reached for the lip of the pool. His strong hand grasped her forearm, dragging her closer whether she wanted his help or not. His other hand got hold of her opposite arm and he pulled her up and out of the pool as though she was a teensy ballerina, not a five-foot-ten mermaid pushing a hundred and thirty pounds. Soaking wet, she added with a private cringe.
Water sluiced off her, and she rather wished he had let her take stock before landing her in front of him, dripping and plastered with wet clothes, not a single thing left to the imagination. Her makeup had to be running and— Okay, good. Her pearls were still here, but seriously. She felt absurd.
She crossed her arms to hide the way her nipples hardened and risked a quick sweep of her gaze around the faces goggling at her. Ingrid was still snickering, hand cupped over her mouth while her eyes danced with laughter.
“What on earth, Mel?” she asked.
“You left your shoe on the bottom, Cinderella,” Huxley teased, moving to where a large net lay against the low garden wall.
“I can’t believe I did that,” Melodie grumbled, mortified but able to laugh at herself. It was so ludicrous.
Roman didn’t seem to think it was funny, though. He was staring at her so hard her wet clothes should have been nuked off her body.
“May I have a towel?” she prompted.
“Of course.” He snapped into motion.
“Oh! I have a bathing suit you can wear,” Ingrid exclaimed. “I bought it yesterday and left it in my bag.” She disappeared into the house and Melodie shook her head. It was far too late for swimwear.
She followed Roman into the nearby cabana where he turned with a towel in his hand. His gaze raked down her again, making her acutely aware of how her clothes were suctioned to her like a second skin. She plucked at her knit top, which only stretched the neckline and ruined it.
Roman came forward, shaking out the towel and slinging it around her. He was so tall it was no problem at all for him to get it around her.
Her heart did another somersault and his musky scent stole through the air of chlorine as his wide chest filled her vision. Weakness attacked her.
“I—” It would be silly to apologize. She hadn’t fallen on purpose, but he looked so thunderous. “Thank you” was all she could manage as he drew the edges of the towel to where her waiting fingers brushed his.
“When you sank like that, I thought I was going to have to come in after you.”
“It was quite refreshing, to be honest. I needed to cool off.”
She shouldn’t have said that. The sexual tension she was fighting became something they both had to acknowledge, like it was a real thing holding them in its vortex.
She found herself staring at his mouth, anticipating its feel against hers. Kisses were about as far as she went these days after losing her virginity for all the wrong reasons. Even kisses, however, always seemed to fall short of the hype. She always felt as though she was going through the motions, not really losing herself to the experience. If she couldn’t get caught up in that much, there was no use going further, she’d decided.
But she remained ever hopeful that she’d find a man who made things different. Today, at least, she wanted to be kissed. Deep longing filled her, making her ache to know how it would feel to kiss the man before her.
Distantly she was aware of his hand grasping her upper arm. He stepped closer. His head tilted.
She should have been startled, but it felt so natural. She dampened her lips. Parted them. And gasped when he branded her with the heat of his mouth.
So hot, so smooth and commanding, instantly hungry. Claiming her like a desert warrior stealing her for his pleasure. His hand splayed in a firm pressure behind her tailbone, bringing her imperiously into the wall of his muscled frame.
Heat burned through her wet clothing, sealing them tight with only the friction of dampened fabric between them.
He kissed her as though he meant it. As though he was making sure she’d never forget this moment. As though she was his and he was ensuring she knew it.
She kissed him back with the same passion, not thinking of anything beyond exploring this new pleasure. Letting him have her because what he was doing to her was fresh and exciting and incredible. His kiss made her feel desired. His tongue touched hers and shivers of delight stung her skin. A flood of arousal seared between her thighs, urged her to lean into him and let a moan of pleasure fill her throat.
“Here you are—oh!” Ingrid said on a breathless burst, then laughed with embarrassed hysteria.
Roman jerked back, keeping one hand on Melodie’s arm to steady her. His firm grip hadn’t hurt her, but his touch left a tingling impression. She massaged the spot, trying to dispel the odd vibration while she noted the front of his clothing wore her moist imprint.
“I’ll come back,” Ingrid offered, grin mischievous.
“No,” Roman blurted, brushing past Ingrid as he moved swiftly out of the cabana.
Ingrid, nearly doubled over she was laughing so hard, she stepped and pulled the curtain across. “O. M. G,” she said with exaggerated significance, eyes huge.
Melodie dropped her burning face into her damp hands, eyes closed in mortification. “I don’t know how that happened,” she groaned.
“Oh, please,” Ingrid chortled. “He’s Roman Killian. You should see what the office looks like when it’s announced he’ll be in. It’s like a red-carpet event, there are so many women wearing push-up bras and designer labels. I’m not the least bit surprised you—pun intended—fell for him.”
“No, I haven’t...” Melodie tried to protest, but her bones were still weak, and if Roman had walked back in and told her to come with him, she would have gone without a second thought.
“Don’t bother,” Ingrid instructed with a shake of her head. “If I hadn’t been crushing on Huxley my entire life, I would have fallen for Roman. He’s gorgeous. What intrigues me, though,” Ingrid lowered her voice to murmur, sidling closer with a little wiggle of excitement across her shoulders, “is the way he is falling for you.”
Melodie shook her head. “You’re mistaken—”
“He can’t take his eyes off you,” Ingrid insisted, enjoyment gleaming in her eyes as she gave Melodie’s drowned-rat state a good once-over. “To be fair, I don’t see him with women very often. I think he’s the sort who compartmentalizes. Work. Play. Know what I mean?” Ingrid made little stalls with her hands. “But when I have seen him with a date, he keeps up that aloof facade of his, never planting one on them as if he can’t wait for everyone else to leave. And they’re always blonde and stacked. Kittenish. Not really striking me as his intellectual equal.”
“I fell into the pool, Ingrid. Hardly a sign of great intelligence,” Melodie argued, heart galloping at the idea that Roman had been unable to resist kissing her.
She was not the type to provoke men to passion. Most of them thought she was too tall and wiry. Her half brother had done a number on her as a child, tearing her self-esteem to shreds in a way she’d only been able to rebuild once she had left home, so she still considered herself an ugly duckling who’d arrived at goose, not swan.
That dented self-esteem, along with her mother’s need of her, had kept her from a serious pursuit of love, but she longed for a deep connection with the opposite sex. With her mother gone, there was more than just a hole in her daily schedule. She felt her single status very keenly. The sight of couples and families made her feel very lonely. She wanted someone to share her life with. Not the facade of a shared life that her parents had had, but the sort of deep, abiding love that Ingrid and Huxley had.
She opened the towel and wrapped it like a turban on her head, throwing off self-pitying thoughts as she peeled away her wet clothes.
Ingrid pulled the tags off the bathing suit and something else that she held up for inspection. “Look. Huxley bought a shirt. You can borrow this, too.”
Any relief Melodie felt evaporated a moment later. Ingrid was decidedly smaller than she was. The bikini would be microscopic even on her client. On Melodie, it was downright lewd.
Ingrid was not deterred. She dropped Huxley’s sleeveless white shirt over Melodie’s head. “It’s a bit risqué, but nothing I wouldn’t wear poolside or to the beach.”
Or in the bedroom to incite her fiancé?
Melodie looked at the thin fabric hanging from narrow straps over her shoulders to scoop low across her breasts and waft in an indecently high hem across her thighs, barely covering her bottom. Even on the beach, this outfit would be nothing less than bait. With the pearls resembling puka shells around her neck, she looked like a surfer groupie trolling for a vacation hookup.
Unfastening the necklace, she muttered, “I can’t believe this has happened. I look so unprofessional.”
“It’s fine. Better than fine. Your legs should be licensed as a deadly weapon,” Ingrid said with a meaningful lift of her brows. “Let’s see if Roman likes them,” she added with a wicked grin, gathering up Melodie’s wet clothes and zipping outside with them, leaving the curtain to the cabana open.
Melodie hesitated, not wanting to be so encouraged by what Ingrid had said about Roman’s interest. She really wasn’t very experienced with men. Aside from her insecurities, a lot of the reason was exactly what she’d told Roman: she was a workaholic. She’d been supporting herself a long time, spending what little extra time she had visiting her mother, advocating for her. The few men she’d been loosely involved with had been nice enough, just not the type to inspire her to make room in her life for them.
Not that she expected Roman to want a place in her life! Quite the opposite. He struck her as a man who expected his women to be self-sufficient and sophisticated. Which she definitely wasn’t—not when it came to relationships. She might not be an actual virgin, but she was a one-time wonder, still not sure what had possessed her to go through with it the first time.
Well, realistically, she knew that immaturity and helpless fury had driven her. She’d wanted to strike back at Anton and had wound up hurting herself and a man who hadn’t deserved to be used. Anton’s friend, a young man Anton had been using so he could party on his family’s yacht, had had a crush on Melodie. She’d reveled in the opportunity to show Anton that not only did his friends find her attractive after all, but she had the power to influence them. She’d made the boy turn down Anton’s demand to sail in favor of taking her for a private cruise. She went through with the lovemaking she’d promised him, but it had been awkward and disappointing. He’d realized she didn’t truly care for him and had been quite devastated. The entire experience had turned into a lesson in being kind to others and true to oneself, which she had tried to follow ever since.
Today, the truth was she might not know Roman enough to care deeply about him, but she was fiercely attracted to him. She wanted to sleep with him. Really wanted that more than she’d ever imagined possible.
With an impatient noise, she reached for the damp towel and slung it around her waist, needing the shred of added protection as she went out to face him.
He wasn’t there, which made her heart sink in an alarming way.
“He went up to change,” Huxley said, jerking his head toward the balcony, adding with a smirk, “Probably having a cold shower, too.”
Ingrid finished hanging Melodie’s wet clothing across the back of the chairs and said to Huxley, “If we’re going to test those jet skis you reserved, we’d better run. You can get a cab, can’t you, Mel? We’re going the opposite direction to the hotel. We’ll see you tomorrow at the meeting with the hotel manager about the room block.”
Could she be more obvious? Melodie liked Ingrid, but at this moment she wanted to push her into the pool. Don’t leave me alone with him.
But the customer was always right, she reminded herself.
Scanning her gaze across the table, she looked for her phone and realized all she had was her credit card in the pocket of her sweater—which was dry, at least. Thank goodness she had that much.
“Sure,” Melodie said with a stiff smile, as if she was still wearing her conservative suit and had this situation fully under control.
“Bye!” Ingrid blew a kiss, grabbed her fiancé’s sleeve and hauled him away.
Blushing with embarrassed annoyance, Melodie contemplated whether to head into the kitchen and ask the chef to call her a cab or stick around to see if Roman wanted to finish kissing the daylights out of her.
Okay, her hormones cried excitedly.
She had to get out of the sun. She was blistering.
Moving to the bottom of the outside stairs, she wavered, but told herself she couldn’t leave without at least saying goodbye.
Yes, wanting to see him again is all about good manners, she mocked herself.
She climbed with trepidation, heart pounding as though she was descending the basement stairs in a thriller movie. So silly. He wasn’t going to attack her. That kiss had been a surprise, but invited and totally mutual. She had wallowed in it.
The part of her that wanted it to happen again and maybe go further was what scared the daylights out of her. She wasn’t that girl. She wasn’t blasé about intimacy. She wasn’t desperate or angry or deluding herself into love at first sight.
She was just really, really enticed by everything about him.
As she reached the top of the stairs, she grew cautious, feeling like a burglar, afraid she’d catch him indisposed.
“Roman?” she tried.
A very deliberate noise sounded, like someone striking a single key on a keyboard, hard. “Yes,” he said from his office.
“I’m afraid I have to ask you to call me a cab.” She tried to act casual as she moved forward. “I didn’t bring my phone and...”
She came even with the open doors of the office and discovered him standing before his clear screens. He had changed, dispensing with a shirt altogether, and now wore only a pair of drawstring linen pants that hung with rakish sexiness off his hips, accentuating his smooth, powerful back and the curve of his buttocks.
“I’d ask Ingrid for hers, but she and Huxley just left...” She could hardly speak. Her throat had gone dry.
He turned. His flat abs and nicely developed chest fixated her. Animal attraction gripped her.
Why? She didn’t understand it, and lifted her gaze to his, trying to work out where this attack of sexual craving was coming from.
He was scanning down her low neckline, taking in the outline of tiny triangles that barely covered her nipples beneath the translucent cotton, eyeballing the towel that she gripped around her hips.
His Adam’s apple worked. “Why are you here, Melodie?” His tone was graveled with intolerance and something almost erotic. Desire?
“I— What do you mean?”
“Here, in my home.” He joined her on the balcony, confrontational and ominous, arms and shoulders tanned and powerful, bare feet planted firmly. “Why are you here?”
“The wedding,” she stated, nerves strummed by the suspicion in his tone.
“Be honest.”
“What do you mean? I didn’t plan this,” she said, waving at her borrowed garb, suddenly realizing how it could look. But she hadn’t made this happen. She wasn’t using it as an excuse to stick around and throw herself at him. Not really. Okay, maybe she was throwing herself at him a little, but—
Oh, good grief. Could this get any worse?
“I didn’t bump you,” he bit out, eyes narrowing. “I didn’t even touch you.”
“No, I know. I was just...nervous,” she stammered, attacked by the same hit of discomfiture that had made her avoid him by the pool. She’d instinctively known his touch would have a devastating effect on her. She’d leaped back from his reaching hand as though he could have burned her. He had burned her. When he’d kissed her in the cabana, the contact had seared all the way to her soul.
“Nervous,” he charged, brows elevating as if he’d caught her out. “Why?”
Because he was a force, not a man. Her reaction to him was so strong it petrified her.
“You’re different,” she hazarded, but couldn’t explain it even to herself.
“How?”
Boy, he was like an extension of his technology with those robotic commands for more information.
She crossed her arms, annoyed, but Ingrid’s words were ringing in her ears. Was he reacting to her and feeling as out of sorts by this situation as she was?
The thought brought a soaring of buoyancy that she quickly tried to tame. A million things were running through her head, all her thoughts coming back to the fact that she was finally meeting a man who made her feel alive. She was interested and excited. Running away like a teenage girl too shy to speak to him would be silly. She’d kick herself forever if she did that. They were grown-ups. She was, by nature, an honest person.
“I find you attractive,” she admitted, and immediately blushed. It was as if she’d deliberately stepped onto a gangplank high over the concrete. Her footing seemed wobbly and threatened to drop her into a hard fall.
“Do you,” he disparaged.
His tone peeled a layer off her composure. She told herself she was being mature and didn’t have enough invested to have anything to lose, but her self-respect grew thin and strained. Bug eyes. Don’t talk to my friends. They all think you’re ugly anyway.
At the same time, she put herself into Roman’s shoes and thought she knew the source of his cynicism. “If you think I’m making some kind of awkward play for the rich guy, that’s not true.”
“You’d think I was just as attractive if I lived in a cardboard shack in a back alley?” he scoffed, arms folding and chin coming up with arrogant challenge.
Dear Lord, he was attractive. Like a Greek god with all that burnished skin over toned muscle, his aura one of superiority and might.
She almost blurted out how she’d walked away from the sort of wealth and education that would have made any job unnecessary for the rest of her life. If he only knew how much contempt she reserved for powerful men and how sorry she felt for the women who loved them...
But all that was behind her, and this moment was only about her and him. Who they were in this moment.
“I might,” she allowed with a weak shrug. This was a physical thing. She suspected no matter where she had encountered him, she would still be unable to control her response to him.
“You don’t even know me,” Roman derided. “Why—?” He bit off the word, looking out to the water, gripped by an angry frustration that went beyond his response to her. He closed his hand on the rail, trying to retain his grip on the situation.
But his gaze tracked unerringly back to Melodie. The low neckline of her shirt accentuated her slender neck and delicate collarbone, offering a teasing glimpse of the upper swells of her breasts. Her damp hair fell in waves around her bare face. She had the sensual innocence of a maiden from a primitive jungle culture, pure temptation in her open regard, Eve-like in her patience for him to succumb to the desire drumming through him. The message was subliminal and as irresistible as a siren’s.
Come to me.
All he could think was, This is a damned sight more than attraction. He was blind with lust, trying to hang on to a cool head while his body still felt the writhe of hers nudging against his erection. She’d inflamed him with their kiss, promising untold pleasure, appealing straight to the basest part of him and completely undermining his capacity for logical thought.
Thank God Ingrid had interrupted them. He was disgusted with himself for kissing her in the first place, let alone allowing her response to ignite his own. The moment he’d walked away from her, he’d begun grasping for rationalizations to explain how he’d reacted so uncontrollably. Maybe he had it wrong. Maybe she wasn’t Gautier’s daughter. Maybe her presence here wasn’t by design.
But he’d reviewed everything and it was all too neat. Her mother hadn’t been in society in years, yet her funeral had been a who’s who of the Eastern Seaboard. Melodie had not only started her new wedding business the minute she had put her mother to rest, but had immediately curried favor with an old family friend who happened to be the mother of his PA. The timing was auspicious indeed. And her fall into the pool, orchestrated so beautifully, allowing her to linger in his home while her clothes dried, was equally suspicious.
Not only that, since yesterday he’d learned that Gautier Enterprises was bleeding red ink by the gallon. And he’d turned up additional photos showing Melodie under her father’s wing, all of them beautifully stoic in the face of her mother’s death. Most significantly, sly moves were happening behind the scenes. Roman’s customers were being offered exorbitant discounts if they signed exclusively with Gautier. False promises were being made about the performance of the most recent Gautier product, and dishonest warnings were circulating about Roman’s.
A fresh rush of hatred had encompassed him a moment ago as he’d looked at a photo of her with her father. Grim anger coiled through him that Melodie had anything to do with the man. He wanted her to be real, not a weapon her father was wielding. Not a willing foot soldier against him.
And he hated himself for being susceptible to her. He’d fallen for Anton’s lies once and was edging dangerously close to being taken in by Melodie’s. It was intolerable.
He’d learned all her weak points, though. Her father might have insulated himself very thoroughly, but she was wide-open. All his plans were in motion. With a tap of a key, he had ensured Ingrid would pick up his email insisting she fire Melodie, and with another ensured Melodie would have no home to go back to in Virginia. The rest of the false front she’d built would collapse like a row of dominoes over the next hours and days.
All while she continued to look at him with those Bambi eyes soft with invitation, a hint of irreverent humor in her smile.
“How well do you usually know the women you’re attracted to when you first meet them?” Melodie asked, pulling him back to the present moment.
Touché. He snorted, privately admitting that physical attraction was typically the reason he set out to learn a woman’s name. Ironically, he had learned more about Melodie before he’d kissed her than he’d ever learned about most women he’d slept with.
Of course, he’d been more attracted to Melodie at first glance than he’d ever been before. He’d only become more intrigued as each minute had passed. And now, despite everything he knew, despite already taking steps to crush her plans, he could barely take his eyes off her breasts, rising and falling in a shaken tremble that was utterly fascinating.
The basest male in him wanted to kiss her again. Feel her under him. Be inside her and see how high the flames would fan.
“Do you think I’m not struggling with this, too? I don’t kiss strangers. I don’t...” She offered a helpless palm, averting her face so he only saw a look of confusion and longing in the profile she turned to the water.
The rest of her was pure temptation, nipples peaking in excitement beneath the tiny red bikini top. Her legs went on forever and his hand itched to find the skin beneath the drape of that oversize, yet completely inadequate, shirt. He was hardening at the thought.
“I just keep wondering how else you get to know someone except by spending time with them?” Her gaze came back to his, earnest and unsure.
He shook his head, amazed by how good an actress she was, relieved on some level that she wasn’t genuine because he would have to do some serious soul-searching before involving himself with such a multifaceted yet sincere woman. He wasn’t cut out for relationships with a future. That was why he was careful how and when he fell into the loose ones he did enjoy.
Fortunately she was a huckster peddling a shell of such relationships, amazing him with her tenacity and smooth attempts to manipulate him, her mouth trembling in a struggle to smile as she offered a hesitant, “Of course, if it’s not a mutual thing, I’ll...”
She took a few steps closer, gaze drifting to the patio below, lashes lowering and brow pulling together in a wince of rejection.
He didn’t move. How could she be this good? How could he be feeling like this? He didn’t want anything to do with her, but he wanted to understand why he was this easily taken in so he could guard against such things further down the road.
“What do you really want from me, Melodie?” he asked in his deadliest tone, willing her to come clean.
“Just, um... Honestly?” She blinked up at him, practically virginal with her defenseless gaze, her mouth working to find words. “For you to kiss me again,” she said, her voice a thin husk. “To see if...” She licked her lips, leaving an expectant silence.
“Come and get it, then,” he said gruffly, trying to scoff, telling himself he was only seeing the extent she’d go to in this industrial espionage of hers, letting her demean herself when he had every intention of rejecting her.
But it didn’t happen that way.
She absorbed his command with a small flinch, then lifted her chin as though gathering her courage. As she stepped up to him, her hands opened on his rib cage in a feathery tickle that made his entire body jerk in reaction. His nipples hurt, they pulled so tight. She was tall enough that when she lifted on tiptoes, her mouth easily met his.
She pressed pillowy lips to his. He told himself to shove her back and tell her—
The rocking of her mouth parted his lips. He caught the first damp taste of her and his tongue shot out instinctively, greedily plunging into her mouth the way he wanted to plunge into her body. He closed his arms around her, pulled her into him with a strength he barely remembered to temper, and slanted his mouth to take full possession of hers.
She opened to him, arched and pressed into him and moaned capitulation.
Rational thought evaporated in a groan of craving.
