A Lesson In Seduction Read online

  She kissed him and for a moment he was passive, but only for a moment. Then the power of her words shuddered through him and he tipped her head back with the devouring force of his hunger. He held her suffocatingly tight, kissing her with a savage eagerness that shattered the last boundaries of his restraint. His hands relentlessly explored her slender back, massaging lower and lower until the floaty hem of her dress was hiked up the back of her thighs, then sliding underneath to cup her lace-covered bottom, lifting her higher into his groin.

  He pulled back, frowning as he watched the silk of her bodice peel off his chest and settle back over her taut breasts.

  ‘I’m naked,’ he said thickly, as if he had only just realised the fact.

  ‘I know.’ Rosalind playfully ran her fingertips across his shoulders and chest, sweeping them down his sides to linger on the tapered leanness of his muscled flanks. ‘I’m glad you don’t wear pyjamas. You’re very beautiful in the nude; just looking at you excites me...’

  His flush deepened and his nostrils flared. ‘I usually wear boxers in bed,’ he said vaguely, ‘but tonight I couldn’t—I didn’t want anything next to my skin...’

  The smile she gave him was sultry and knowing. She dropped her gaze to the point where their hips were sealed together, the erotic pressure preserving his modesty.

  ‘Except me?’

  ‘Except you,’ he admitted heatedly, his expression becoming dark and devilish as he watched her smile curve with a hint of complacency, the feminine version of a flung-down gauntlet.

  The male in him bristled at her confidence even as he exulted in a fierce sense of victory. The element of danger only added spice to the situation. Edgy, emotional, elegantly sensuous Roz Marlow had finally succeeded in luring herself into his net. Just when he had almost conceded defeat she turned around and did something like this. She was a riddle, wrapped inside a mystery.

  But not for much longer. A night of unbridled passion might be all she thought she was offering, but he intended to take more...much more. He would unwrap her secrets just as surely as he intended to unwrap that dainty, delectable body.

  His fingers moved provocatively, sliding down inside her fragile lace panties to smooth over the softly rounded cheeks of her bottom. Rosalind shivered and instinctively moved her hips into his touch, but instead of lingering to enjoy her acquiescence Luke continued to plunge his hands downwards, pushing her panties to her knees and then, with a sudden dip and a sideways twist, raking them roughly to her ankles.

  He straightened, meeting her startled eyes with a look of blazing male triumph at his reckless daring. To her astonishment she felt herself blush and he gloated openly at the betraying crack in her facade of worldly sophistication. His hands settled firmly back on her waist, holding her steady as he ordered gruffly, ‘Step out of them.’

  Rosalind obeyed, her legs brushing against his, trembling slightly in response to his smouldering aura of suppressed sexual excitement. He liked giving her orders and her meek show of obedience was an incitement to his boldness.

  ‘Are you wearing a bra?’ he demanded in a low, smoky growl.

  Rosalind nodded, even though they both knew an answer was unnecessary. He had traced the outline of it while he had been kissing her, his fingers meticulously investigating the seams and identifying the fastening between her shoulderblades. He had merely asked so as to tantalise her with the knowledge of what he was going to do next. He wanted her naked under the liquid silk dress, dressed yet undressed, vulnerable to his desire...

  ‘It’s strapless,’ she told him unsteadily as his hand slipped through the wide armhole of her halter-necked dress to deal with the hooks. He took so long that she wanted to scream but the combination of taunting deliberation and fumbling difficulty was so much a part of the intensely erotic scenario that Rosalind forced herself to stand still until finally the flimsy undergarment gave way. He tugged and gravity obliged as her bra slithered out from under the loose A-line dress, landing with a hushed thud at her feet that seemed to quake through every nerve cell in her body.

  Rosalind had never been so aware of her own sexuality as she was at that moment—never been more anxious for a man’s approval.

  Luke stared at the polished silk rippling over her skin like a midnight-blue waterfall, a provocative veil for the supple contours beneath. The thin sheen of the fabric was sculpted taut between her high breasts, her nipples jutting out as stiff peaks from which the graceful cut of the dress cascaded away to shimmer and swirl around her slender hips and honey-smooth legs. His chest rose and fell unevenly, his hands flexing violently at his sides, his manhood stirring and thickening against his flat belly. She had been mistaken in thinking that he had been fully aroused when he’d got out of bed, Rosalind realised with a flutter of apprehension.

  She had the feeling that in his lovemaking, as in most other things, Luke was capable of a fierce concentration that brooked no distractions. She didn’t think he would actually force her, but the familiar vague-eyed absorption with which he was studying her made her wonder if he might unintentionally hurt her in the throes of passion. Yet, oddly, her fear—of his size and the more nebulous threat of his identity—merely gave her own desire an added piquancy.

  ‘Is this what happened in your dream?’ she challenged, feeling a slow wave of heat wash through her body at the thought of being compelled to accommodate that potent hardness.

  In answer he reached out and cupped her breasts through the silk, lifting the soft mounds and smoothing the fabric with his thumbs so that her distended nipples were outlined even more explicitly.

  ‘This is much better than a dream,’ he muttered as her breasts ripened and grew heavy in his cradling hands. He licked his lips and Rosalind unconsciously arched her back but he ignored the subtle invitation. His gaze lowered to her hem and his hands followed, gathering the flimsy fabric and slowly pushing it up her honey-coloured thighs until he exposed a tantalising glimpse of fiery red curls.

  ‘Much better...’ he whispered hoarsely, letting the dress fall again, veiling her femininity in a dark swirl of silk. His hands moved up over her belly, shaping the delicate imprint of her navel...up to her breasts again, and back down to toy with her hem...to slip his hand up underneath and delicately brush his fingertips over the unseen fleece... to reach around and massage the silk over the flare of her hips, tracing it into the sensitive crease between her quivering buttocks.

  He was playing with her. This gorgeous, naked, inexperienced man was playing her like a master...drawing out the exquisite agony of desire until Rosalind thought she was going to explode with frustration at her passive role.

  ‘Aren’t you going to take it off?’ she blurted out jerkily as he wound a swathe of silk around his fist, forming another shimmering perspective of her body. Luke’s erotic absorption faltered and suddenly it occurred to her that perhaps he wasn’t quite sure of his next move. ‘Or would you like to watch me do it?’ she said, reaching behind her neck and releasing the jewelled clasp that was the dress’s only fastening.

  ‘Yes, you do it,’ he murmured thickly, his hard body glossy with a faint mist of perspiration as he watched her cross her arms and whisk the flared hemline up over her head.

  She didn’t get any further. Even before she had freed herself from the billowing silk Luke had swept Rosalind backwards onto the bed with a hoarse sound of inarticulate need. Blindfolded in midnight-blue, she found herself pulled beneath him, his mouth and hands eagerly roaming over her desperately squirming body.

  He bit into her tender flesh, his groans and whisper of raw pleasure inflaming her smothered senses as he hungrily sought her swollen breasts and suckled fiercely on the engorged nipples while she struggled to free herself from the fabric surrounding her head and arms, succeeding only in entangling herself further. Her frantic writhing and gasps of helpless delight excited Luke to a frenzy and the full weight of his tightly compact body surged on top of her, his hands tugging at her thighs, prising them roughly apart, a
groan tearing its way out of his chest as he settled himself heavily into the enticing wedge, his congested loins straining against her fiery heart, probing for its moist centre.

  Rosalind finally managed to wrench the maddening dress over her head and toss it aside, but Luke was already rising above her on his arms, his chest rigid, his muscles bunching convulsively as he arched his back and threw his head back, blindly driving himself between her thighs with a guttural shout of gratification.

  Rosalind echoed his cry, clutching his slippery, straining back as he sheathed himself to the hilt in her wet warmth. She barely had time to adjust to the agonising pleasure of being invaded and stretched to the brink of bursting before Luke was drawing back with a harsh moan and heaving convulsively forward again in a second, massively powerful thrust, his face contorting in a mask of pure ecstasy as he stiffened and then began to shudder in a violent spasm of completion that left him slumped heavily on top of her. She lay blinking over his lax shoulder at the panelled ceiling, stunned by the speed and intensity of his climax. She could feel him still pulsing hotly inside her tense body.

  He shuddered again—a deep, sobbing breath. ‘I’m sorry... Oh, God, Roz, I’m sorry...’

  He withdrew before she could stop him and rolled onto his back, his chest heaving, his arm thrown across his eyes as he continued the choked litany of apologies. ‘Couldn’t help it...like some crass adolescent...’

  ‘Luke... Luke!’ She stroked his up-raised arm. ‘It’s all right—’

  He jerked away from her touch. “There’s no need to pretend, damn it! I told you you might be disappointed.’

  He sounded like a sulky boy. She wanted to peek under his arm but the grim line of his mouth warned her not to try. She raised herself on one elbow, her aching frustration turning to indulgent amusement mixed with heady anticipation. ‘Are you kidding? For goodness’ sake, Luke, I’m flattered that you exploded all over me like a firecracker.’

  His chest stilled and the arm over his eyes tensed. ‘A crazed sex maniac, more like.’

  Her heart gave a little flip. ‘I prefer to think of you more as a satyr...the combination of that Greek-god body and those eyebrows—well... you’re bound to be governed by your earthy passions when you finally catch the nymph of your dreams!’

  She could see the glitter of his eyes as his arm shifted slightly. She stretched her supple body and, when she was quite sure he was watching, casually turned her back and slid off the bed, bending to pick up her silk dress and slithering it over her head.

  His arm whipped down as he pushed himself up against the disordered pillows. ‘What are you doing? Are you leaving?’

  She smiled at his mixture of outrage and anxiety as she strolled provocatively back to the bed and crawled onto it on her hands and knees. ‘Certainly not. Now it’s my turn.’

  ‘Your turn?’ he asked warily, watching her prowl across the rumpled sheets towards him.

  ‘To explode all over you...’ She daintily lifted a slender leg across his body and settled herself firmly astride his hips, modestly smoothing her silk dress down over his tight flanks, intrigued to note the visible ripple that undulated the length of his body. She squirmed herself slowly into a more comfortable position and lifted a haughty eyebrow at him as she felt the subtle male shift between her thighs.

  A shadow of a smile quivered at the corner of his sexily narrow mouth. She wanted to kiss it but instead she leaned forward, folding her forearms provocatively across his collar-bone, making sure the unfastened neckline of her dress gaped to show him her softly swaying breasts, the erect tips almost touching his chest.

  ‘The first time was for you...this is for me...’ She looked at him through veiled lashes. ‘Then it’ll be your turn again,’ she said, and laughed at the molten look he gave her. ‘That’s how it works, you see...it’s called give and take...a very fertile ground for improvisation...’

  His hunger congealed into shock. ‘My God, I didn’t even use a condom!. Are you using anything?’

  ‘No, but it’s OK—’

  He twisted his torso to fumble for the soft leather shaving case on the table beside the bed. ‘No, it’s not OK! I promised to protect you and I let us both down. It’s never OK to leave these things to chance.’

  He was so savagely upset by his lapse that it seemed natural to tell him, ‘It is for me—always—that is, if it’s pregnancy you’re worried about,’ she said quietly. ‘My attack of pelvic disease left me permanently sterile. As for the other kind of protection...we both have that safety zone of celibacy, don’t we...?’

  ‘Oh, Roz...’ He collapsed back on the pillows, his hands moving to cradle the classic oval of her face, his dark eyes filled with shocked regret. ‘Oh, Roz...’

  She shook her head, his unspoken sympathy sinking like music on her heart. ‘I’ve got a big extended family, lots of money and an extremely challenging, fulfilling career. I can’t expect to have all that and heaven too! Shakespeare had it right—“what’s past help/Should be past grief”.’ She nipped at his fingers and gave him her famous jaunty, gamine grin. ‘And it does mean that I get to enjoy my sexy satyr in his raw, natural state.’

  She wiggled her bottom and felt a fillip of joy when he instantly attuned himself to her mood and gave a mock growl, making wicked play with the eyebrows that so obviously enchanted her.

  The second time they made love was far more shattering than the first. This time Luke kept careful pace with her, exercising a fierce self-control as she rode his iron-hard body to the pinnacle of bliss, withholding his own bucking release until he could use it to drive her over the edge into a wild, free-falling rapture of the senses.

  He proved unquenchable in both curiosity and desire, his stamina equalled by his eager inventiveness, and by the time Rosalind fell asleep, curled against his gloriously sated body, she knew that she had found a precious gift.

  When the telephone first rang she moaned, and tried to burrow deeper into warm, musky skin, but eventually the irritating intrusion into her cosy world became too much and she reached out to rake the receiver under the sheet, grunting sleepily into the mouthpiece.

  ‘Luke? It’s Jordan,’ a terse, static-ridden voice rapped out. ‘I just wanted to tell you that you don’t have to keep an eye on Roz any more.’

  A frown wrinkled her lightly tanned brow. ‘Jordan? Jordan Pendragon—is that you?’

  There was a small silence. ‘Roz?’

  ‘Jordan?’ She was fully awake now, wriggling out from under Luke’s heavy arm, meeting a gaze that sprang from sensuous approval to shrewd alertness as Luke registered the name on her lips. ‘Jordan, what’s going on?’

  ‘You’re five hours behind us...isn’t this rather early for you to be answering Luke’s phone?’ he countered curiously.

  ‘Maybe he’s keeping a better eye on me than you thought,’ she said bitingly. ‘Would you mind answering my question?’

  Thousands of kilometres away Jordan sighed. ‘Now, Roz, you know how worried Olivia was about this letter business. All I did was ask a friend to discreetly watch over you—’

  ‘A friend?’ she repeated ominously, sharply slapping Luke’s hand away as he tried to remove the telephone from her ear. well, he and I knew each other quite well when I worked for the Corporation. He was the colleague I saw when you and I were at the airport. When I went over to say hello and found out that he was going to Tioman, well... I know what a straight-up guy he is—not street-smart but physically a tough cookie with a cautious brain that makes him cool-headed in a crisis—I’d trust his judgement of people any day of the week... so I told him about your stalking letters and how you refused to countenance protection and asked if he would mind keeping tabs on my favourite sister-in-law without making it too obvious what he was doing—’

  ‘Well, he certainly stuck to orders on that one,’ Rosalind grated, ignoring the blatant soft soap since she was Jordan’s one and only sister-in-law. Her eyes were chips of emerald ice as they froze on the culprit’s gri
m but unrepentant face. ‘And now you’ve decided your friend isn’t up to the job of minder after all?’

  Tension crackled down the line. ‘No, it’s just not necessary any longer. I was going to ring you after I spoke to Luke.

  ‘Roz, they’ve found your letter writer; they’ve found Peter...’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ROSALIND went clammy, an ugly premonition crawling across her skin.

  ‘They?’

  ‘The police. He’s dead, Roz. He killed himself at his flat in Wellington a few weeks ago...but he was such an unsociable type that they only found the body yesterday. Peter Noble was his name. He took some sort of overdose on prescription medication, poor sod—they’re not sure whether it was deliberate or not, because there wasn’t any suicide note...’

  Roz was vaguely aware of Jordan explaining the pitiful circumstances, and the fan paraphernalia, diaries and letters which led the police to approach the Marlows with their information.

  Thank God they had nothing to connect Peter with Peggy through her, she thought, but she was sickened to realise that the police had dated his death at just days before that fateful meeting in the Wellington hotel. That might explain Peggy’s mentally disorganised behaviour that day. Had she known Peter was dead—was that what she had been trying so hard to warn Rosalind through the pain of her heart attack?

  Perhaps she had somehow got into Peter’s flat and discovered his body, but had panicked at the prospect of reporting it, even anonymously. She might have been afraid to admit it to Rosalind, too—hence the elaborate, rambling lead-up. She would have been crazed with guilt and grief.

  And ever since, all the time that Peggy had been lying unconscious in hospital, her son had been lying dead in his pathetic shrine to yet another woman from whom he had received nothing but rejection...

  ‘Oh, God!’ Rosalind curled over on herself on the bed, the morning sickness she’d thought she had beaten burning like acid in her throat.