Читать книгу Virgin For The Billionaire's Taking - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 7

‘EXCUSE me.’

Keira had been so focused on watching the bustle of guests in the ancient palace courtyard, where two of her closest friends had just married, that she hadn’t realised that she was blocking the pathway to the garden. She had intended to make her way to one of the pavilions put up for the wedding celebrations, but had become distracted by the magical, intoxicating atmosphere of it all.

The male voice was authoritative and deep—velvet-rough, Keira decided, as though the nap of the fabric had been brushed to reveal the strength that lay beneath the silky surface. Just hearing it made her feel as though that same fabric had brushed against her own skin, and the sensual effect on her sent small electric shocks of awareness darting through her. His accent was recognisably English public school, and university honed: the accent of a man who took both position and wealth for granted as his right of birth. The accent of privilege, power and pride.

Would her accent give away as much about her? Would he sense the Northern accent she had learned to conceal beneath the tones she knew worked best for her in her business as an interior designer?

She turned towards him, her lips framing an apology for the fact that she had been so intent on watching what was going on that she had inadvertently blocked his way along the narrow path that led from the courtyard to the gardens. Her eyes widened as she realised she was looking at the most sexually compelling and dangerous man she had ever seen.

As though her whole body and all her senses had been hard-wired for this moment, every nerve-ending she possessed was reacting to him with a silent but violent intensity. It was like being physically attacked by her own body—like being mugged and having the protection of her normal caution stolen from her. She was frozen and wide-eyed, as aware of the dangerous nature of his impact on her as if she had been standing in front of an oncoming train.

The power of his sexuality slammed into her, leaving her unable to defend herself from it.

Jay didn’t know why he was wasting his time standing here letting the woman stare at him in the way that she was, blatant in her awareness of him.

Admittedly she was beautiful. But she wasn’t the only European guest attending the wedding, though with her looks and figure she would have stood out no matter where she was. Tall and elegant, she had a refined air about her whilst the lush curves of her body and the soft fullness of her mouth said clearly that hers was the kind of sensual nature he most enjoyed in a woman.

In bed she would display a sensuality that came straight from the most erotic pages of the Kama Sutra, enticing any man who became her lover into pleasuring her until she cried out against the intensity of that pleasure. He could see her now, her dark hair spread out against the pillows, her eyes luminous with arousal, the lips of her sex curving softly and moistly, waiting to open to his touch like the petals of a lily open to the heat of the sun, exposing the pulsing heart of their being, giving that most intimate part of themselves up to the sun’s heat, spreading their petals in open appeal for its possession, the scent of their longing filling the air.

The sudden intensity of the sharp surge of desire hardening his body caught him off guard, causing him to shift his weight from one foot to the other.

At thirty-four he was more than old enough to be able to control his physical reactions to a desirable woman, and yet somehow this woman had him reacting to her so fast that he had been caught by the wayward direction of his own thoughts—and his desire for her.

She hadn’t made any attempt to don the costume that the female Indian guests were wearing so confidently and elegantly, as some European women did when attending Indian celebrations. But none of those things would normally have been enough to counteract his belief that she was covertly suggesting to him that she was available, and thus by the law of probability was also available to any other man who might have chanced to cross her path. He waited for the desire she had aroused within him to be chilled by the distasteful idea he had deliberately conjured up, and frowned with the recognition that it had not done so.

He was even more stunned when he heard himself asking her, ‘Bride or groom?’

‘I’m sorry…’

‘I was asking which side of the wedding party you belong to,’ he told her.

His choice of the word ‘belong’ stung her pride and her mind with the familiar pain of knowing that there was no one in this world to whom she ‘belonged’, but it was somehow overwritten by the intoxicating fact that his question suggested that he wanted to prolong his contact with her.

He was undeniably handsome. Tension bit into her, as though some instinct deep inside her had pressed a warning button, but to her shock her senses were refusing to listen to it. How old was she? Certainly too old to stare in open awe at a man, no matter how good-looking he was. And yet, like a child hooked on the adrenalin kick of sugar, despite knowing that it wasn’t good for her, she just couldn’t stop looking at him.

He was wearing a light tan linen suit of the kind favoured by wealthy Italians, and everything about him breathed cosmopolitan upper-class privilege, education and wealth. His skin had the right kind of warm olive tint to it to carry off the suit, just as his body had the height and the muscles. Were his shoulders really that broad? It looked like it from the way he moved.

And yet, despite everything about him that proclaimed old money and social position, Keira could sense within him another darker side, a marauding, dangerous ruthlessness that clung to him so powerfully she could almost smell it.

She fought not to be drawn into the aura of magnetism that surrounded him. If anything was intoxicating her then surely it must be this most wonderful of wedding venues.

Originally a summer palace and hunting lodge owned by an ancient maharaja, it had been converted into a luxury five-star hotel. Formerly an island palace, it was now connected to the shore by a handsome avenue, but the impression created as one approached was that the palace and gardens floated on the serene waters of the lake that surrounded it.

If it wasn’t the venue then perhaps it was the sensual scent of the lilies resting on the still water of the pools that was having such a dangerous effect on her senses? Whatever the cause, it was in her own interests to remember that she was supposed to be a rational adult.

Keira took a deep, calming breath and told him firmly, ‘Both. I’m a friend of the bride and the groom.’

A swirl of activity refocused her attention on the wedding party. Late afternoon was giving way to early evening darkness, and preparations were almost finished for the evening reception. The small flickering flames of hundreds of glass-covered tea lights were scattered artfully around the large courtyard and floating in the pools and fountains, and the lights reflected in the lake beyond it giving it a magical aura of romance.

Richly embroidered pavilions in jewel colours were being erected as though by magic, their gold threadwork catching the light, and the branches of the trees in the gardens beyond the courtyard dripped strings of tiny fairy lights, illuminating the paths that led to individual guest suites in what was now one of India’s most exclusive hotel and spa resorts.

Soon the newly married couple and their families would be changing for the evening, and she needed to go and do the same, she reminded herself, and yet she made no move to step aside, thereby ending their conversation and allowing him to walk away from her.

Perhaps it was something to do with the late-afternoon sun that was transforming the sky above them from deep turquoise to warm pink, or the languorous heat turning the air soft with a sensuality that was almost like a physical touch against her skin that was causing her heart to thud with heavy-laden beats. Or perhaps it was the effect the man standing so close to her was having on her.

Something inside her weakened and ached. It was India that was doing this to her. It had to be. She was beginning to panic now, caught off guard and out in the open with nowhere to run by the shockingness of her own vulnerability to instincts over which she had previously believed she had total control.

She needed desperately to think about something else. The wedding she was here to attend, for instance.

Shalini had used the magnificent venue for her wedding as the inspiration for her choice of traditional clothes. Tom had thrown himself into it, and had looked amazing in his red and gold turban, his gold silk sherwani suit and scarf embroidered to match Shalini’s gold and red embroidered lehenga.

Keira would have wanted to attend Shalini and Tom’s wedding wherever it had been held; they, along with Shalini’s cousin Vikram, were her closest friends. And when Shalini had told her that she and Tom had decided to follow up their British civil marriage with a traditional Hindu ceremony here in Ralapur, nothing could have kept Keira away.

She had been longing to visit this ancient city state. It had captured her imagination immediately when she had first read about it. But Keira hadn’t just come here for Shalini’s wedding and to see the city. She had business here as well. She most certainly hadn’t come looking for romance, she decided, before elaborating on her presence at the wedding.

‘I was at university with Tom and Shalini,’ she explained, before asking curiously, ‘And you?’

It was typical of her type of woman that her voice should be low and husky, even if the slight vulnerable catch in it was a new twist on the world’s oldest story. He had no intention of telling her anything personal about himself, or the fact that his elder brother was the new Maharaja.

‘I have a connection with the bride’s family,’ he told her. It was after all the truth, since he owned the hotel. And a great deal more. He looked out across the lake. His mother had loved this place. It had become her retreat when she’d needed to escape from the presence of his father the Maharaja and his avaricious courtesan, who had turned his head so much that he’d no longer cared about the feelings of his wife and his two sons.

Jay’s mouth, full-lipped and sharply cut in a way that subtly underlined its sensuality, hardened at his thoughts. He had been eighteen, and just back from the English public school where both he and his brother had been educated. That winter the woman who had stolen away his father’s affections with her openly sexual touches and her wet greedy mouth, painted with scarlet lipstick to match her nails, had first come to Ralapur. A ‘modern’ woman, she had called herself. A woman who had refused to live shackled by outdated moral rules, a woman who had looked at Jay’s father, seen his position and his wealth, and had wanted him for herself. A greedy, amoral harlot of a woman who sold herself to men in return for their gifts. The opposite of his mother, who’d been gentle and obedient to her husband, and yet fierce in her protective love of her sons.

Jay and his elder brother, Rao, had shown their outrage by refusing to acknowledge the existence of the woman who had usurped their mother in her husband’s heart.

‘You must not blame your father,’ she had told Jay. ‘It is as though a spell has been cast on him, so that he is blind to everything and everyone but her.’

His father had been blind indeed not to see the woman for what she was, but he had refused to hear a word against her, and Rao and Jay had had to stand to one side and watch as their father humiliated their mother and himself with his obsession for her. The court had been filled with the courtiers’ whispered gossip about her. She had boasted openly of her previous lovers, and had even threatened to leave their father if he did not give her the jewels and money she demanded.

Jay had burned with anger against his father, unable to understand how a man who had always prided himself on his moral stance, a man who was so proud of his family’s reputation, quick to condemn others for their moral lapses, should behave in such a way.

In the end Jay had quarrelled so badly with his father that he had had no option other than to leave home.

Both his mother and Rao had begged him not to go, but Jay had his own pride and so he had left, announcing that he no longer wished to be known as the second son of the Maharaja, and that from now on he would make his own way in the world. A foolish claim, perhaps, for a boy of only just eighteen

His father had laughed at him, and so had she—the slut who had ultimately been responsible for the death of his mother. Officially the cause of her death had been pneumonia, but Jay knew better. His gentle, beautiful mother had died of the wounds inflicted on her heart and her pride by a tramp who hadn’t been fit to breathe the same air. He loathed the kind of woman his father’s lover had been—greedy, sexually available to any man who had the price of her in his pocket.

He had been reluctant to return to Ralapur at first, when Rao had succeeded their father, but Rao had persisted, and out of love for his brother Jay had finally given in. Even now he wasn’t sure if he had done the right thing.

The boy who had walked away from a life that held the status of being his father’s second son into an uncertain future where he would have nothing but his own abilities had returned to the place of his birth a very wealthy man, who commanded respect not only in his own country but throughout Europe and North America as well. A billionaire property developer with such a sure eye for a successful venture that he was besieged by people wanting to go into business with him.

Now he was old enough to understand the sexual heat that had driven his father to forsake the high-born wife he had wed as a matter of state protocol and tradition for the courtesan who had courted and mastered his physical desire. Jay could to some extent exonerate his father, but he could never and would never forgive the harlot who had shamed their mother and stained the honour of their family name.

Keira watched his expression change and saw cold hauteur replacing the earlier heavy-lidded sexual interest that had darkened his eyes. What was he thinking? What was responsible for that look of arrogance and pride? Did he know how daunting it was? Did he care?

‘You’re here alone?’ Jay cursed himself under his breath for having stepped into a trap he had known was there. But secretly he had wanted to—just as secretly he wanted her, this woman with her high cheekbones and her soft full lips, her golden eyes and her pale, almost translucent skin.

Why on earth should he want her? Women like her were ten a penny. She wasn’t wearing any rings, which might not mean anything other than the fact that no one had ever given her a ring expensive enough for her to want to wear it. His last mistress had only accepted the end of their affair after a swift visit to Graff, the famous diamond house in London, where she had quickly pointed out to him the pink diamond she had obviously already picked out ahead of their visit there.

If he hadn’t already been tired of her the fact that she had chosen such a gaudy stone would have killed his desire for her. Like all his lovers, she had been married. Married women were far easier and less expensive to leave when the affair was over, since they had husbands to answer to.

Jay had no desire to marry, though his status as the second son of the late Maharaja meant that it would be expected that he would make a dynastic marriage to someone deemed high-born enough to become his wife, their marriage negotiated by courtiers and lawyers. Jay had a deep-rooted aversion to allowing other people to arrange his life for him, aside from the fact that he had absolutely no interest in bedding a naïve, carefully protected ‘suitable’ girl, whose virginity would be traded as part of the deal in the negotiations for their marriage.

Such a marriage would be for life. The truth was that he was vehemently opposed to making a long-term commitment of any kind to any woman. No way was he going to be forced to part with any of the vast fortune he had built up through his own blood, sweat and tears to some conniving gold-digger who thought he would be stupid enough to commit to her in the heat of lust, and would expect a handsome ‘separation’ settlement from him once that lust had cooled and he wanted to get rid of her.

Keira hesitated, well aware of her own vulnerability. But it wasn’t in her nature to lie, and even if it had been she suspected that Great-Aunt Ethel, the cold and embittered relative who had brought her up after her mother had died, would have beaten it out of her.

‘Yes.’ Somehow she managed to stop herself from saying those telltale words, And you? But she knew that they were there, spoken or not, and it made her realise how far she had already travelled along a road that she knew to be forbidden to her. If the great-aunt who had brought her up—reluctantly—after her mother’s death were here now, she would make it very plain what she thought of her behaviour in talking to a strange man, giving him heaven alone knew what impression of herself, risking bringing shame and disgrace on her family, just like…

Keira’s heart was thumping with all the driven intensity of the thud of war drums, menacing as they came ever closer, pouring the sound of threat and fear into the pounding hearts of their enemy. She wasn’t going to be trapped by her own panic, though.

Perhaps she had looked at him for a split second too long, but that did not mean anything—not in this day and age, when a woman could look as boldly at a man as she chose. A man, maybe. But never this man. This man would see such a look as a challenge, an infringement upon his male right to be the hunter, and he would react powerfully to it, taking…Taking what? Taking her?

The unwanted direction of her own thoughts was so shocking that she immediately recoiled, fighting to push them away as she struggled to force herself to look at him without giving herself away.

Heavens, but he was good-looking—more than good-looking. He wore his blatantly male sexuality with the same careless ease with which he wore his hand-stitched suit. But she, of course, was immune to the message being subliminally relayed to her by the suit and his sexuality. Wasn’t she?

Keira shivered. It was never a good idea to challenge fate. She knew that. This was a man who positively oozed a raw sexuality that had the air around him thrumming with male hubris and testosterone—a man who, without her being able to do a single thing about it, had got under her carefully constructed guard and forced her body to acknowledge his effect on it.

He wanted her, Jay admitted reluctantly. He wanted her very badly.

Her full-length cream skirt, worn with a round-necked sleeved top, and the fine long cream silk scarf she was wearing certainly stood out amongst the jewel colours most of the other female guests were wearing, giving her an angelic air despite the darkness of her hair. She looked ethereal, and fragile, but there had been nothing ethereal about the look he had caught her giving him a few seconds ago: the look of a woman whose sensuality was aroused and clamouring for satisfaction.

The courtyard was almost empty now, the other guests having made their way to their rooms to change for the evening reception, and they were alone together. A small frisson of something that wasn’t entirely a warning shivered over her skin.

This was getting ridiculous—and dangerous. She should have stepped out of his path the second he had asked her to do so, instead of…Instead of what? Standing here, watching him, greedily absorbing every detail of his vibrant maleness as though she was savouring some forbidden treat? What was she going to do with those stolen images? Take them to her bed and replay them inside her head whilst she…?

She had to get away from him, and from the effect he was having on her. Keira turned to leave, and then froze as he stretched out his arm to rest his hand on the illuminated trunk of a tree on the other side of the footpath, blocking her exit. His fingers were long and tapered, his nails clean and well shaped. She drew in a ragged breath of sun-warmed air, inhaling with it the scent of the evening—and of him. She might as well have inhaled a dangerous hallucinatory drug, she acknowledged as her gaze lifted compulsively to his face. His eyes weren’t brown, but the cool slate-grey of northern seas. Her gaze was drifting downwards to his mouth, and Keira knew that no power on earth could have stopped her looking at it. His top lip was well cut and firm, whilst his bottom lip was sensually full and curved.

As unstoppable as a tsunami, a surge of sensation broke deep inside her. She took a step forward, and then one back, making a small sound that contained both her longing and her denial of it. But both the backward step and the denial came too late to cancel what had come before them.

She was in his arms, his fingers biting deep into the soft flesh of her own upper arms, and his mouth was hard and possessive on hers in a kiss of such intimacy that it tore down the trappings of civilisation.

Neither his kiss nor her own response to it could have been more intimate if he had stripped her naked—and she had wanted it, had completely offered herself to him, Keira recognised with a violent sense of shock. She could hardly stand up, hardly breathe, hardly think for the rush of physical hunger consuming her. It swept through her, obliterating everything that stood in its way, a violent storm of need that had her frantically sliding her hands beneath his jacket and then over his chest, trembling with her need to touch him.

His mouth was still on her own, both plundering and feeding the tight, hot ache of desire deep inside her. Panic pierced the hot sweetness of her own dangerous pleasure. She could not, she must not allow herself to feel like this. Horrified by her own behaviour, she forced her heavy-lidded eyes to open and focus on him. A shudder of denial gripped her body as she pulled herself out of his arms, and told him jerkily, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t do this kind of thing. I shouldn’t have allowed that to happen.’

Now she had surprised him, Jay acknowledged. He had been about to accuse her of trying to lead him on and then withdrawing to get him more interested in her, and her almost stammered apology had startled him.

‘But you wanted it too,’ he challenged her softly.

Keira wanted desperately to lie, but ultimately couldn’t.

‘Yes,’ she admitted. The pain of her own weakness and self-betrayal was too much for her to bear. It had to be the Indian air that was causing her to behave in such a reckless way, making her break every promise she had ever made to herself. It could not be the man watching her! Must not be him.

Panic clawed at her insides. No doubt he felt he had every right to be angry, every right to demand an explanation. But there wasn’t one she could give him, so instead she turned on her heel, half running, half stumbling through the starry scented darkness.

Jay made no attempt to stop her. Initially he had been more concerned about his own unwanted physical response to her than in taking things further. It had only been when she had pulled back that he had felt that dangerous male surge of sexual anger at her denial. But then she had gone and totally disarmed him with her admission, her apology showing him a quirky vulnerability that right now was having an extraordinary effect on him. She intrigued him, excited him, piqued his interest in a way that challenged him mentally as well as sexually.

He had simply been walking through the palace gardens when he had first seen her. He had planned to spend the evening going over some important documents and making some phone calls, but now he was thinking about putting all of that on hold.

A woman who could admit that she was in the wrong in any way, and most especially in her sexual behaviour, was a very rare creature indeed in his experience. She was here alone, she had admitted that she wanted him, and he certainly wanted her. Jay’s mouth curled in a totally male half-smile of anticipation.

Keira didn’t stop to look over her shoulder to see if he was still watching her. Once she was inside her room with her door locked she leaned back against it, unable to move whilst cold shock and nausea filled her. She started to shiver. What on earth had she done? And, more importantly why had she done it?

How had she let that happen, after all these years—years during which she had worked so assiduously to make sure that it did not? Why, when she had so easily resisted the sexual appeal of so many other men, had she behaved like that with this one? What was so special about him that had so easily broken through the wall she had built around her own sexuality, setting it free to make its demands heard?

Panic was clawing at her like a wild animal desperate to escape captivity. She couldn’t allow her sexuality its voice. She couldn’t allow it to exist, full-stop. She knew that. Her great-aunt had warned her often enough what was likely to happen to her—the degradation she would suffer, the shame she would bring on herself and her great-aunt. Even though Ethel had been dead for nearly a decade, Keira could still hear her voice as she told her what would happen to her if she followed in her mother’s footsteps.

Keira had been twelve years old when her mother had died and her great-aunt had taken her in—or rather had been forced to take her in or face her neighbours finding out that she had abandoned her. She hadn’t wanted her. She had made that plain.

‘Your mother was a slut who brought disgrace on this family. Let me warn you that I’m going to make sure that you don’t turn out the same, even if I have to beat it out of you,’ she had told Keira when the social worker who had taken her to her great-aunt’s house had left, adding, ‘I’ll have no cheap little tart living under my roof and bringing shame on me.’

Because she was her mother’s daughter, all it would take was one step in the wrong direction, her great-aunt had told her, to lead her into a life of sin.

And so Keira had learned to keep a guard on her heart and her body. When boys at school had called her ‘frigid’ and ‘iron knickers’ she had thrilled with pride rather than been upset. Slowly and carefully she had created for herself a non-sexual world in which she felt safe—a world in which she could never become her mother’s daughter.

That world had been hers for so long she had assumed it would always be that way, and yet shockingly now, out of the blue, she had discovered what it felt like to want a man—and with such depth that it had left her reeling. And still wanting him. No! But the real answer was yes.

She went hot and then cold. She started to tremble and to shiver. Her whole body ached and pulsed with unfamiliar sensations and needs. She felt as though her mind was on fire with her own feverish imaginings, and her body too. It was like being in the grip of some kind of fever. Perhaps she was. Perhaps that was why she had reacted as she had. Was there a fever that could cause a person to desire someone like this? Of course she knew that there wasn’t. So what exactly had happened to her? Why was her body still aching with the aftershock of what it had wanted and been denied? Where had it come from, that deep physical need so diametrically opposed to everything she had taught herself to be? Was this how it had started for her mother?

She shivered again, even more violently, feeling sick with fear and despair.