Scandal In The Spotlight: The Couple Behind the Headlines / Redemption of a Hollywood Starlet / The Price of Fame

CHAPTER TEN

FOR several long minutes there wasn’t a sound in the room except the harsh, then softening, pants of ragged breathing.

Reeling from the intensity of his climax, Jack focused on the slowing of his thundering heart until it was back to normal, then shifted and took his weight on his elbows. He felt Imogen shudder and clamp around him as a series of tiny aftershocks rippled through her.

‘Well, you certainly deliver,’ she said, gazing up at him with a quivery kind of smile. She lifted her head to plant a sizzling kiss on his mouth before sighing with languid satisfaction and flopping back against the pillows.

So did she, he thought, gazing down into her eyes, a glazed soft dark brown, and for a moment losing himself in their depths. Aftershocks of a different kind were racing around his head, because that had quite simply been astonishing. She’d been astonishing, and if there was one thing he’d realised it was that they weren’t finished. Not by a long shot.

‘I aim to please,’ he murmured, rolling off her and sitting on the edge of the bed to deal with the condom.

‘Oh, you do. And I’m definitely going to have to rethink my stance on dessert,’ said Imogen. She manoeuvred herself to her knees, pressed herself against his back and ran her hands over the muscles of his shoulders.

‘Dessert?’ he echoed, so distracted by the soft warmth of her wrapped around him that he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

‘Remember when you first suggested dinner?’

Jack winced. ‘How could I ever forget?’

‘You also suggested skipping it and heading straight to dessert.’

‘So I did.’ He twisted around and pressed her back and down. ‘As I recall you weren’t particularly impressed.’

‘I was very much impressed.’ She lay there, her hair tumbling over his pillows as she clutched the sheet to her chest and grinned up at him. ‘But I was trying desperately hard not to be.’

He shook his head. ‘What a lot of time we’ve wasted.’

‘It’s only been three days.’

So it had. Hard to believe when their bodies moved together as if they’d known each other for years.

‘Still too long,’ he murmured, attributing that disconcerting thought to extraordinary sexual compatibility, and then burying it. ‘Just think,’ he added, running a hand over her shoulder and slipping it beneath the sheet, ‘we could have been doing this since Tuesday.’

She batted her eyelashes up at him, a seductive smile curving her mouth and her eyes turning so dark they were almost black. ‘Then why are we talking when we should be making up for lost time?’

As his body hardened Jack lowered his head. ‘Beats me,’ he muttered, and set about making up for lost time the best way he knew.

Well, that had been quite a night, thought Imogen, blinking lazily at the weak early sunshine that spilled in through the gaps in the blind and hearing the soft swoosh of the lift doors closing.

And actually quite a morning …

She shivered and sighed and stretched, knowing full well that her smile was wide and sated but not caring one jot. Because, frankly, why would she?

She’d never had so many mind-blowingly intense orgasms in her life and she’d never expected her sexual horizons to have been broadened to quite such an extent. But to her delight, over the course of the night—and the morning—she’d learned that many of the outrageous things Jack had murmured into her ear in the inky darkness of the hotel’s conservatory had been anatomically possible, and their extensive research into the matter had led to pleasure so great it had almost hurt.

Imogen’s eyes drifted shut as her imagination replayed scene after scene after scene. Jack was amazing. His stamina was incredible, his desire for her dauntless, and as for what happened when he lost his grip on his control … Well, that was just staggering.

And she badly wanted some more of it, she realised, feeling her body stirring once again. The minute he got back from picking up the wrap she’d abandoned at the hotel she’d suggest it. So far they hadn’t made it out of bed, and while she had nothing against beds—when they came with Jack in situ she was positively in favour of them—a change of venue might be nice.

Maybe she’d go and get in the shower so that when he came back he’d find her all hot and naked and wet and wouldn’t be able to resist joining her.

Or maybe she’d wander into the kitchen so that he’d find her dishevelled and slumberous, wearing nothing but a bedsheet while she made coffee.

Or maybe—

At the shrill ring of the phone, Imogen jerked out of her imaginative bubble with a pop and realised she was hot, blushing and tingling. Goodness, what had happened to her? Twelve hours of some seriously great sex and she was addicted.

She heard Jack’s voice echoing through the flat asking the caller to leave a message, and yanked a pillow over her head to blot it out. For one thing, listening to that voice, even on a machine, was not conducive to her attempts to calm down, and for another she didn’t feel entirely comfortable about eavesdropping.

However, as the beep sounded and dulcet female tones began to replace his seductively deep ones any scruples she might have had about not wanting to eavesdrop vanished. Tossing the pillow to one side, Imogen lay there, her ears pricked and her antennae quivering, but rigidly still, as if the woman on the other end of the line would be able to tell she was listening if she moved.

‘Jack?’ came the soft voice that made all the tiny hairs on the back of her neck bristle and jump to attention. ‘It’s Emily. I’m just ringing to confirm we’re seeing you later. I hope you haven’t forgotten or anything. Daisy’s so looking forward to it … Hang on … What?’ There was a pause. The sound of a phone being muffled and the mumble of another female voice in the background. And then she was back. ‘Oh, and Anna says don’t forget to bring something to sleep in.’

Huh? What? Imogen jerked upright, the curiosity racing through her so powerful it could have killed a dozen cats.

‘OK, then, we’ll see you later. Bye, darling.’

Darling? Darling? Who on earth was Emily? Who was Daisy? And who the hell was the Anna who knew so much about what Jack wore or rather didn’t wear in bed? Were they all friends? Ex-girlfriends? Current girlfriends? Or—

Imogen bit her lip and slammed the brakes on her spinning imagination before she had Jack getting up to all kinds of dissolute and debauched antics. Her stomach could stop that churning and those little arrows of jealousy could get lost because she wasn’t bothered one little bit by what he got up to. She was only after his body, and even that on a highly temporary basis.

Nevertheless, it did hammer home how little she knew about him. For all she knew he might be into threesomes. Foursomes. Orgies. He might have fetishes, visit clubs and who knew what else?

With her body and brain on the point of overheating, Imogen let out a groan of frustration at her inability to control her wayward imagination. What with all this extra work it was having to cope with, it was a surprise it hadn’t short-circuited.

She threw back the sheet and swung her legs to the floor. It really was none of her business. Jack could get up to whatever he wanted to with whoever he wanted to. And as he clearly had plans for later, that might or might not involve three women and very little clothing, she ought to head off and leave him to it.

Besides, she reminded herself as she padded into the bathroom and flicked on the shower, she’d already jumped to a dozen erroneous conclusions where he was concerned and she was not going to jump to any more.

Of course, she’d never dream of asking, but there was bound to be some logical innocent explanation for why Jack had a woman ringing him up requesting he remembered his pyjamas when he came round later that night. Absolutely bound to be.

Jack strode through his flat, draped Imogen’s wrap on the back of the sofa and dumped the bag of pains au chocolat he’d picked up on the way back on the kitchen counter. It really was extraordinary, he thought. After the night—and morning—they’d had, he ought to be exhausted. At the very least be done with her for a while. But was he? It would appear not. He’d only been out for ten minutes but the image of her lying sprawled and sated in his bed had accompanied him all the way to the hotel and back, and every second he was away from her had felt like an hour. So no, it seemed he wasn’t done with her at all.

But that was hardly a surprise. Never had a woman responded so swiftly, so instinctively or so wildly to his touch. Never had anyone thrown caution so splendidly to the wind nor been quite such an enthusiastic research assistant.

Jack grinned at the memory of the sexual gymnastics they’d practised, and headed to the bedroom. The whole night had switched between being intense, dark and explosive then light, teasing and fun. And he wanted more. A lot more.

He paused mid-stride and frowned, his heart skipping a beat as alarm bells rang. More? Oka-a-ay. So that was new. It wasn’t that he chose to have one-night stands exactly. It was simply that that was how things generally turned out, which was fortunate as he liked variety.

But there was no need to panic. Just because sex with Imogen had surpassed all his expectations—and he’d had a few—and just because it put pretty much every other sexual experience he’d ever had in the shade, it didn’t mean anything. It was the roller coaster of the build-up that had made it so explosive. That was all.

Given that they’d put it off for so long wanting more was only natural, and, if he kept things strictly to sex, what was the problem with seeing her again? As far as he could work out there wasn’t one because he never did anything else. He certainly never combined sex with anything as messy as emotion. Quite apart from the fact that he didn’t do emotion, he never made—nor would make—the mistake of thinking that sex ever meant anything other than the mutual satisfaction of completely natural needs.

So it—he—would be fine.

Satisfied that he’d got things clear in his head, Jack switched his attention to the sound of running water coming from his bathroom.

At the thought of Imogen in the shower hot and wet and covered with bubbles his body instantly hardened. He stripped off his jumper and jeans, then plucked a condom off the bedside table, tore open the packet and, gritting his teeth against the exquisite agony, sheathed himself.

As desire whipped around inside him, he walked into the bathroom. Steam billowed around the marble surfaces and curled off the limestone-tiled walls, and a fine film of sweat coated his skin.

The outline of Imogen’s body was just about visible through the foggy glass. She had her back to him and her arms were raised, her hands in her hair, and the intensity of what he wanted to do to her slammed into his head and made his heart thunder.

Oh, he wanted more. Much more.

Opening the door, Jack stepped in and flinched as needles of hot water pounded his skin. Blinking the water out of his eyes, and mindful of what had happened the last time he’d startled her—and how much more damage she could inflict this time—he lifted his hands and wrapped them round her wrists.

Imogen froze then jumped. She let out a gasp and made a move to turn but he held her where she was and pulled her back against him. He felt her shiver. Heard her murmur, ‘I thought I warned you not to startle me.’

‘Why do you think I have my hands on your wrists?’

‘Restraint, Jack?’

‘Not my kind of thing.’

‘Then let me go.’ She squirmed against him, but not in an effort to get free, and it sent need shooting through him.

‘In a minute,’ he said. ‘I think I could be changing my mind.’

He inched her forwards and pressed her hands up against the cool limestone tiles that lined the wall of the shower.

‘I thought that was supposed to be my prerogative,’ she said, her voice laced with such hoarse desperation that it did dangerous things to his self-control.

‘You can stop me any time you like,’ he muttered, thinking that nobility was all very well, but if she did stop him he might expire.

So just in case she was tempted to think along those lines, he slowly slid his hands down her arms, then round to cup her breasts. Her head dropped back against his shoulder, and when his mouth came down on the pulse throbbing at the base of her neck, he felt her shudder.

‘Now why would I want to do a thing like that?’ she mumbled and arched her back to push her breasts harder into his hands.

He brushed his thumbs over her nipples and closed his eyes against the warm water sluicing relentlessly over them, then trailed one hand lower, slowly stroking over her ribcage, the slight curve of her abdomen, down to the centre of her.

She moaned low in her throat when he slid his fingers into her, and she ground her bottom into his pelvis. He heard her breathing shallow. Felt her shake. And unable to take the burning pressure growing inside him any longer, he backed up a little, bent her forwards, and, gripping her hips, drove into her.

‘So, any excitements while I was gone?’ asked Jack, quite a while later.

Imogen watched him move around the kitchen, switching on the kettle and rummaging around in a cupboard for the coffee grounds with impressive efficiency, and frowned as she contemplated his question.

Any excitements other than the fact that at some point during the ten minutes he’d been out she’d clearly lost her mind? Because that surely was the only explanation for her complete inability to resist him.

There she’d been, in that shower, determinedly not thinking about what Jack might be up to later and telling herself she’d be calling a taxi the instant he returned with her stole, when he’d materialised behind her.

Seconds later she’d been lost. With the feel of his hard body enveloping her, his voice reaching right down inside her and winding round her nerves, and the erection hot and hard and pressing into her bottom, she’d folded like a pyramid of cards in a breath of wind.

And now look where she was. Perched on a bar stool in his kitchen and leaning against the counter, wearing nothing but one of his shirts and her knickers, her stomach rumbling at the prospect of breakfast.

Which so hadn’t been the plan.

Wishing her resistance were stronger, Imogen stifled a sigh. ‘You had a phone call.’

Jack glanced up from the cafetiere into which he was spooning coffee. ‘Who from?’

‘How should I know?’ she said, shrugging deliberately carelessly, then dragging her gaze from his and taking an avid interest in the granite surface of the breakfast bar. ‘They left a message, but I didn’t listen.’

‘How very admirable of you.’

The amusement in his voice told her he didn’t believe her for a second, but that was fine because that was her stand and she was sticking to it. ‘It didn’t seem polite.’

‘Of course it didn’t,’ he murmured, brushing past her to press the red button flashing on the base of the telephone that sat in the corner of the kitchen.

As Emily’s voice rang through the flat again, and all the scenarios she’d tried not to envisage came rushing back, Imogen forgot herself and winced. It sounded even worse the second time round, she thought, frowning and biting her lip.

‘Didn’t hear it, huh?’

She jerked her gaze to Jack’s, and to her mortification the blush that she’d been battling back broke free and flooded into her face. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ he said, coming back and pouring boiling water into the cafetiere, ‘because if I’d heard that message, I’d have jumped to some pretty spectacular conclusions.’

Imogen swallowed and felt her cheeks burn even more fiercely. ‘I’m sure you would, what with your imagination.’

Jack glanced at her and grinned. ‘I guess I’d be thinking threesomes. Foursomes even. Possibly an orgy or two.’

‘That would be that dirty mind of yours,’ she said primly, silently cursing her transparency. ‘My pure and innocent one would never have come up with anything so …’ She trailed off as she racked her brains for a word that wouldn’t inflame her already burning body any further.

‘Carnal?’

‘Complicated.’

His hand stilled mid-plunge, and his eyes gleamed and darkened in a way that made her think he was remembering last night. ‘As I think we’ve established,’ he said softly, ‘there’s nothing pure and innocent about you.’

‘You’ve corrupted me.’

‘No more than you’ve corrupted me.’ He reached for a couple of cups and then took a jug from the fridge. ‘Milk?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Anyway,’ he said, pouring coffee into the cups and adding milk to one, ‘I’m sure you’re not interested in the slightest but those conclusions—the ones you didn’t come to—would be wrong.’

‘Would they?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Why?’

Jack pushed the cup across the counter towards her and grinned. ‘I’ve never been good at sharing. I’m far too selfish.’

Imogen’s eyes widened. Selfish? Jack? No doubt he had flaws—who didn’t?—but after the attention he’d lavished on her last night, she didn’t think selfishness was one of them.

‘Something to do with being an only child I should think,’ he was saying, ‘but whatever the reason, more than one woman at a time has never appealed.’ He flashed her a lethally sexy smile. ‘And if there were two like you I doubt I’d survive.’

‘Then what are you doing tonight?’

Oh, no, thought Imogen, immediately clamping her lips together although it was far too late. That had just blown her protestations of innocence to smithereens, hadn’t it? And what the hell had happened to her supposed lack of interest in what he got up to?

Jack grinned triumphantly and pounced as she’d known he would the second the words had left her mouth. ‘Aha! I knew it.’

Inwardly fuming at the piteous nature of her will power, Imogen scowled. ‘Has anyone ever told you you can be unbelievably smug at times?’

Jack’s eyebrows rose. ‘Smug?’ he said. ‘Well, let me see …’ He frowned and tapped his fingers against his mouth as he pretended to consider. ‘I’ve been called arrogant, presumptuous, cold, callous and emotionally bankrupt, but smug?’ He paused and glanced up at the ceiling as if racking his brains, then gave his head a quick shake. ‘Nope, that’s one I haven’t heard before.’