Читать книгу His Most Exquisite Conquest: A Delicious Deception / The Girl He'd Overlooked / Stepping out of the Shadows - Кэтти Уильямс, Robyn Donald, Cathy Williams - Страница 9

‘YOU’VE got it all wrong!’ Rayne threw over her shoulder, flying ahead of him into the villa. Her blood was pounding in her ears, her racing heart making her sound as though she’d just run five miles.

‘Have I?’ King demanded grimly, the strength of his own hormones putting a flush across his high cheekbones. ‘I’m not a callow youth, Rayne, and if your story holds any water—as I’d like to believe it does—I can’t think of any other reason why you constantly feel the need to antagonise me.’

Oh, dear heaven …! She stopped dead, breathing hard, her lashes coming down over her eyes, because he could see it, even though she was refusing to. But how could it be this strong, she wondered hopelessly, when she despised him as much as she despised Mitchell Clayborne? It was as if all of her pent-up teenage frustrations about him had rushed back and were screaming to be dealt with. But how could he be so astute? How could he tell?

Dry-mouthed, she touched her tongue to her top lip as he turned her round to face him.

‘You terrify me,’ she said, startling herself, because surely that was Lorri speaking. The hapless kid who had adored him from a distance, and who would have died for him, given half the chance. Not the mature twenty-five-year-old who knew him for what he was and hated him with every trembling bone in her body.

‘I know,’ he acknowledged sagaciously. ‘But it’s yourself you’re afraid of, Rayne. The fear of an involvement that wasn’t in your plans. Well, believe me, my beautiful girl, the thought of what you’ve been doing to me since I got here—and what you can still do to me—terrifies me, too.’

She laughed, but her throat felt clogged. ‘You? Terrified?’

‘Does that seem so strange?’

‘No, just inconceivable,’ she responded, wishing her credit cards were sorted so she could tell him where to go and just get the hell out of there. As it was, she felt like a butterfly caught in a fly-trap whose promise of the sweetest pleasure only hid danger beneath. Her head was spinning and her legs felt weak, while every organ in between was throbbing with the almost uncontrollable need to reach for him, pull him down to her and drown beneath the pleasure of his ravaging mouth, breathe in his heady, far too tantalizing cologne.

‘Why? Because I’m a man? And obviously a very experienced one at that?’

‘Something like that.’ She didn’t know what she was saying any more. Couldn’t seem to tell him where to go, or drag herself away from him—even if she’d wanted to. Because that was just it, she realised suddenly. She didn’t.

‘I might be a man of the world, but I’m willing to bet you could give me a run for my money.’

Was that what he thought? Rayne swallowed, guessing that he would probably laugh if she told him how few sexual encounters she had had in her lifetime.

‘And that’s your experience speaking, of course.’

‘Of course.’

Well, that’s where you’re wrong! she wanted to fling at him, wishing she had the nerve to play along with him and do what some other women in her position might do. Flatter his ego and enjoy a brief spell of the pleasure he could give her, then watch his anger explode when he found out who she really was and realised she’d made a fool of him. Oh, to hurt him as he’d hurt her! Hurt her father when he’d joined Mitch in taking what had never been theirs to take! But common sense warned her that men of King Clayborne’s character couldn’t be hurt, and that even to entertain such a tempting idea was no less than crazy.

Instead she said, ‘Well, dream on, King. I didn’t come here to have a fling with you or anybody else, and you’re very much mistaken if you think I did!’

‘Not intentionally, no.’

Pulling herself out of his disturbing sphere, she viewed him warily from under her lashes. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ she challenged shakily.

‘I’m sure you didn’t intend to charm your way in here only to find yourself fighting an attraction that is bigger than you are. Bigger than both of us, if I’m honest. But you’re giving off pheromones, Rayne, that no man this side of ninety could possibly ignore. And quite simply, darling, I wouldn’t dream of insulting you by pretending to ignore them. And if you refuse to accept the effect you’re having on me, I’m sure you’re way too experienced not to acknowledge this.’

It was inevitable what was going to happen. But even that acknowledgement couldn’t have prepared her for the onslaught on her senses when his head dipped and his hard masculine mouth finally covered hers.

It was like two universes colliding. A barrage of riotous emotions and sensations that rocked her to the very core of her femininity, driving everything from her mind but the need to be kissed and stroked and caressed by this man and this man alone—because she still wanted him, much, much more than she had ever wanted him before, and with a hunger that excited and thrilled her even as it appalled.

And he wanted her too …

She didn’t have to be experienced to recognise the rock-hard evidence of just how much as his arm tightened around her, locking her to him, and shamelessly she realised that that was what he had been referring to a moment ago, rather than just the inevitable joining of their hungry, ravenous mouths.

With a small murmur, which was half-need, half-despair, she wound her arms around his neck, glorying in the sensations that his six-feet-plus of power-packed masculinity sent coursing through her as she moved convulsively against his hard warmth.

‘Can you deny it now, Rayne?’ His voice was hoarse, a ragged whisper against the softness of her cheek. ‘What is there to lose in admitting that you want me every bit as much as you’ve made me want you?’

And just how much he hadn’t even realised until now. He’d had women in his time who’d given him pleasure and to whom he’d given pleasure in return. But that was all it had been. Pleasure. This girl, however, had a way about her that excited him and made his anatomy harden to such an extent that it hurt.

But why? Why, when to seduce her had been a cold, calculated plan? When he’d intended to remain detached and—if he was honest with himself—to have her begging, virtually down on her knees, for him to take her?

Well, that just showed him, he thought, mocking himself for his lack of immunity, his inability to stay unaffected, when all he wanted to do right now was rip off her clothes and carry her up to the nearest bed and feel her warm softness closing in around him, her body bucking beneath his as he drove into her.

Steady on, King …

He was breathing raggedly as he lifted his head.

‘So what’s it to be, Rayne? Your bed or mine?’ He was amazed at how cool—how indifferent—he managed to sound.

There was nothing cool, though, or indifferent, about the hand that was suddenly making contact with his left cheek, taking him so unawares he nearly overbalanced.

‘How dare you!’ Rayne found she was trembling so much she could hardly get her words out, realising that it wasn’t just his effrontery that was responsible for her impulsive action. It was also aggravated by the knowledge that she had invited what had happened between them every inch of the way, so that her anger was directed more at herself and her abandoned response to his kiss rather than at him.

‘I’m sorry. I could hardly help jumping to what I believed was a very natural conclusion,’ King expressed, holding his smarting cheek, deciding that he had rather overstepped the mark. Nevertheless that still didn’t stop him from enquiring mockingly, ‘Are you usually prone to bursts of violence?’

‘You drove me to it!’ It was a small wild cry, born of her despair over responding to him in the way she had, and for striking him, which she was thoroughly ashamed of now.

‘You drove yourself to it,’ he said quietly. ‘Firstly by refusing to acknowledge that there’s definitely something between us, and then in not doing so, suddenly finding yourself way out of your depth.’ His mouth moved in a kind of contemplative half-smile. ‘I’ll just put it down to frustration, shall I?’ he remarked, his eyes skimming over her in a shaming reminder of what had just transpired.

‘Put it down to whatever you like!’ she breathed, shocked by the passions he could arouse in her and, pivoting away from him, she fled up the stairs, wanting only to crawl into a hole and pretend that none of her shameless behaviour had ever happened.

In the privacy of her room she sank down on the sumptuous bed, dropped her head into her hands and groaned.

Whatever had come over her? Not only to throw herself at him as she had when he had had the audacity to kiss her, but then to slap him like that afterwards as though it had all been his fault. Being quite honest with herself, she was forced to admit that he was right. She had wanted him to kiss her. Wanted it like she had never wanted anything. A man who had hurt her father and, with Mitch, had as good as destroyed her family. Was that why she had hit him? Was it all part of the need for retribution? Or was King Clayborne simply always destined to bring out the worst in her?

Angry tears burned her eyes, but they were tears of remorse and scorching shame too. How could she have responded to him so easily, and without so much as a conscience? Without any thought for what the Claybornes had cost her parents. Was she really that weak? She padded over to the en suite bathroom to try and scrub the taste of King Clayborne off her mouth, promising herself, as well as both of her parents, that she would never let it happen again.

And if he did find out that she had been lying to him?

She shuddered, closing her mind against that intimidating scenario. That was something she definitely refused to think about on top of everything else.

The florist at the other end of the line seemed to be taking forever to deal with the order Rayne was trying to telephone through.

‘And the name on the card?’ she asked mechanically, in heavily accented English.

‘I explained to the lady I spoke to first that I haven’t got a card, but she said it would be all right if I brought the cash down before you close this afternoon. My name’s Lorrayne Hardwicke,’ Rayne told her, sending anxious glances towards the closed door.

She had come in here to the study to make a couple of calls and to try and sort out a birthday bouquet to be sent to her mother. She’d wanted to do it from the privacy of her own suite, but the maids were changing the bed and giving the rooms an extra fine clean today, and time was getting scarce if she wanted her mother to receive her flowers in the morning.

‘I’m afraid I cannot process the order unless we receive the credit or the money … what is it you say? Upfront,’ the woman emphasised, remembering. ‘I’m sorry, mademoiselle, but those are the conditions.’

‘But your manageress distinctly assured me it would be all right,’ Rayne despaired. She hadn’t missed sending her mother flowers on her birthday since she was eighteen, when things had started really going downhill for her parents. And OK, she couldn’t pay with a card, but she had a small amount of cash that she had earned from chauffeuring Mitch around, and the florist had said it would be all right.

‘My manageress has just left for the afternoon. I will try and get hold of her and ring you back if you will give me your number. What did you say your name was?’

‘Lorrayne Hardwicke.’

‘Can you spell that, please?’

Rayne darted another glance towards the door as she heard voices on the other side of it.

‘I’ll call you back,’ she said quickly, snapping her cellphone shut a fraction of a second before the door opened and King walked in.

‘What the …?’ His smile for whomever he had been talking to outside was wiped away by surprise at seeing her sitting there behind his father’s desk.

‘My room’s being cleaned and I needed to make a couple of calls,’ she told him croakily, not sure what was disturbing her most. Nearly being caught red-handed blurting out who she really was, or the visual images of what had happened between them earlier in the day. ‘Of course, if I’m intruding …’ She was already swivelling back on the studded leather chair.

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

In fact he was looking at her over what seemed like an acre of polished mahogany as though he was imagining her naked and spreadeagled across it. Or was that just what her own wild imaginings were conjuring up? She slammed the lid down on her errant thoughts before they could manifest themselves on her face. ‘I … I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘Evidently not.’ He’d been to pick up Mitch at his own insistence, and had come in here to find his pen to sign some letters his secretary had faxed through while he was gone. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t be acting as though I’d just caught you rifling through the silver cabinets.’ A distracted smile twisted the sensuous line of his lower lip. ‘Perhaps that’s it,’ he declared airily, pocketing his pen. ‘Are you looking for something, Rayne?’

‘No.’ At least that much was true. If she had been, it would be for the evidence that would prove that MiracleMed was her father’s. She knew, though, that she didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of finding it here in this luxurious Mediterranean retreat, if in fact any proof existed at all.

‘If you must know, I’m just a bit peeved because I was trying to order some flowers for Mum,’ she told him, gripping the padded arms of the chair, which she seemed to have become rooted to ever since he had come in, ‘but it seems you can’t even breathe these days if you haven’t got a credit card.’

He nodded. ‘Make the call,’ he advised. To her stunned surprise, he was taking his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Make the call,’ he reiterated, taking out a credit card.

‘I … I couldn’t possibly,’ she stammered, blushing to her roots as she realised how her statement must have sounded. As though she was asking him to help her. ‘I didn’t mean I wanted you to …’

‘What’s the number?’ he asked, ignoring her embarrassment.

Seeing how determined he was, she quoted it from the piece of paper she’d jotted it down on earlier.

‘Now what is it you want?’

With a little shrug, feeling indebted, uncertainly she told him. He dealt with it swiftly and effortlessly. And not only that—in fluent French!

‘And the recipient?’ he enquired, reverting to English to ask her.

Cynthia Hardwicke, she almost said, realising only just in time that that would blow her cover good and proper. ‘Address it to “Mum,” care of …’ Casually she filled him in with the name of the friend her mother was staying with. ‘And the message is simply, Happy Birthday. Love from Rayne.’

It took him just seconds, it seemed, to supply the florist with his own details, his voice deep and confident, its dark rich timbre sending an unwanted tingle along Rayne’s spine.

‘Thanks,’ she murmured when he had finished, unable to look at him as she came around the desk. ‘I really wasn’t asking you to do that. I can let you have the cash.’

‘There’s no hurry,’ he said, his tone surprisingly reassuring, the sudden touch of his hand on her shoulder bringing her startled gaze to his.

She looked instantly wary, King thought, noticing the guarded emotion in the green-gold depths of her eyes. They were, quite simply, the most beautiful eyes he had seen on any woman he’d ever met, but there was some other emotion behind the wariness that was defying him to touch her. Sadness, he was startled to recognise. Deep-buried, but not altogether concealed. And he knew in that moment that somehow—somewhere—those eyes had penetrated his consciousness before. Last week? Last year? He gave a mental shrug. Perhaps it was only in his dreams.

‘We got off to a bad start.’ He was surprised at how hoarse his voice sounded. Was it because his hormones had kicked in again, causing him to harden from the warmth of her body through her thin blouse? Or was it the dark and heady mixture of her perfume? ‘I thought it might be sensible if we were both to try again.’ Otherwise she’d get away from him, he was sure, and he’d never lost a woman he’d set his heart on having in his life.

‘Try?’ she ventured croakily, realising why she had never stood a chance against his potent masculinity as a teenager. He was really quite amazing. With those dynamically dark looks. In the way he spoke. The way he carried himself. As if he owned the world. Which he probably did. Or a fair proportion of it anyway, she thought cynically, resenting him for how rich he was, how influential, and for making her wish that she was spreadeagled over that desk with him …

‘To be civil to each other,’ she heard him saying. ‘I’ll accept that your reason for being here is all above board. And you …’ He was massaging his lower jaw with his free hand. ‘You’ll promise to keep your hands to yourself.’

Wings of colour touched her cheeks from his all too shaming reminder of how she had struck him. ‘As long as you promise to do the same with yours.’

‘If that’s what you want.’

Rayne felt her throat constrict. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

He smiled silkily. ‘You know very well.’

Yes, she did. The last thing she wanted was for him to spell it out, but it seemed he was going to anyway as he went on.

‘Calling a truce, unfortunately, isn’t going to put paid to the fact that there’s a definite chemistry between us, Rayne, even if you do want to deny it. But a woman doesn’t respond to a man the way you responded to me unless she wants that man to make love to her. Even if she is, as I’d very much like to rule out, a woman with some other agenda.’

‘I got carried away—that was all,’ she said quickly, hating to admit it but desperate to quash any adverse notion in his mind about her reasons for being there. ‘So. I find you attractive.’ Who wouldn’t? ‘But we don’t always give in to what our baser instincts are telling us to do, do we? I’m sorry I reacted in the way I did.’ She was referring to striking him. ‘I was just a bit wound up, that’s all. Unprepared …’

‘For what happened between us?’

She nodded.

‘And are you still unprepared?’

No, she wasn’t, she realised, because even this conversation with him was turning her on, making her body zing with a host of traitorous impulses.

‘I can deal with it,’ she said huskily, wishing she could tear herself away from him, but she couldn’t seem to do it.

‘Can you?’ When she didn’t respond, too sensually aware to answer, coolly he suggested, ‘Let’s see.’

As he was speaking he’d positioned himself on the edge of the desk. Now, as his arm snaked around her tiny waist, Rayne lost her balance and shot out a hand to steady herself, gasping as she made unwitting contact with the hard, bunching muscles of his thigh.

The intimacy sent shock waves coursing through her body. She could tell from King’s sharply drawn breath that it was having a devastating effect on him too.

‘Heaven help me if you weren’t sent here just to drive me out of my mind!’ he rasped before his mouth came down to plunder the warm, willing cavern of hers.

This time she didn’t stop to think because the scent and sound and feel of him were driving her insane for him and suddenly she was utterly lost to the eager and hungry demands of her own body.

When he tugged her blouse open and pulled a lacy cup down over her full, high breast, she arched her back, angling her body in sweet invitation to him to take the hard throbbing tip into his mouth.

Proud of her femininity, she writhed between his thighs, thrilling in his strength as he used them to clamp her to him, while he continued to drive her crazy by suckling harder at her breast.

Unlocking her womb, she thought crazily, as sensations spiralled downwards to the most secret heart of her, making her hot and moist in readiness for the hard penetration of his body.

‘Deny it all you like, you’re going to be my woman, Rayne. You are my woman. Understand?’ he breathed raggedly against the sensitised hollow of her ear. ‘Otherwise why would you let me do this?’ His fingers found her other breast, making her gasp and strain against him as he tormented the sensitive bud. ‘Or this?’ His other hand slid down her body to clasp her buttock, caressing and moulding, its heat searing through her thin trousers before it moved possessively round to cup her aching femininity. ‘Why?’ he demanded huskily. ‘If you can’t accept that, too?’

She wanted to protest. She knew she should. But how could she? she demanded chaotically of herself. When she knew she had been made for this! That she was his and always had been, and that even if her mind recognised the treachery of acknowledging it, her body wouldn’t listen.

But she had to make it listen …

He’s your enemy. So what does that make you?

Dredging up every ounce of self-discipline that she could muster, she wrenched herself away from him.

‘I don’t want this!’ she choked, dragging the back of her hand across her mouth.

‘Really?’ Still perched on the edge of the desk, he was breathing as heavily as she was. ‘Then you’re putting up a darn good show of convincing me otherwise.’

‘I don’t care what you think.’ Which was a joke, she thought distractedly, even as she said it. Because, for some strange reason she still did. ‘I don’t want to get involved with you.’

‘Why not? When it’s so patently obvious that we could be good together?’ He looked hot and flushed and still so obviously aroused. ‘Are you in a relationship with someone else?’

‘That’s none of your business,’ she snapped, straightening her clothes with faltering fingers.

‘So you aren’t,’ he deduced correctly.

Because wouldn’t it have been the best way of keeping him at bay, she thought, realising it too late, if she had said she was?

‘So what was it, Rayne? A disappointing attachment?’

You could say that! her heart screamed bitterly, because there had been nothing that had shamed or disillusioned her more than her reckless crush on him.

‘I just don’t go in for casual sleeping around.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ he responded deeply, his eyes fixing on her with a dark intensity. She looked really quite shaken, he thought, wondering why, when in every other way she seemed so much a woman of the world. ‘For what it’s worth … it doesn’t rank very highly with me, either.’

‘Hah!’ Despite her brittle little laugh, she couldn’t help wondering if he was telling the truth. She wanted to kick herself for hoping that he was.

‘You really have a very low opinion of me, don’t you?’ he remarked, running a long tapered hand through his thick hair. She was surprised to notice that it was trembling slightly.

So even the high-and-mighty Kingsley Clayborne was human!

She wondered why she was even allowing herself to grant him any concessions, and put it down to the fact that she was so affected by him—by what she had allowed him to do to her—that she was still too unsettled by it to feel anything.

‘Why should it matter to you what I—’ she began as she was smoothing back her hair, but broke off when a stick prodding the door he’d failed to close brought it flying open. Both of them had been too otherwise preoccupied to hear the wheelchair approaching.

‘King? Rayne? Oh, there you both are!’ Mitchell Clayborne’s colour was unusually high as he manoeuvred his chair into the room and Rayne guessed he’d been doing too much, against his doctor’s orders.

‘King, I wanted you to retrieve the book I dropped down behind the bedside cabinet but, since Rayne’s here, she can do it for me and perhaps read a little to me. Have you finished with her?’

King’s eyes were speculative as, on his feet now, he regarded her from his superior height, looking totally unfazed by what had just happened between them.

‘Yes, I’ve finished with her,’ he told his father.

Reluctantly inhaling his scent, keen to get away, Rayne brushed past him, although she could tell from that slight compression of his devastating mouth that what he was really saying was that where she was concerned he hadn’t even begun yet.