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‘Is that what you’ve got planned for yourself—your own rags to riches story?’
Her jaw worked from side to side as her eyes sparked cold flame.
‘Excuse me, Mr Demakis. I’d really like to say it’s been a pleasure…’
She turned to leave, a liquid ripple of blue disappearing into the crowd.
‘So what’s it like for an Australian in Beverly Hills?’ he called after her through the babble and laughter of the crowded room.
She stopped dead, her back stiff, and then for a second it looked as if she was going to keep moving.
‘What’s it like to be so far from home?’
She swivelled this time, her expression perplexed. ‘You picked up on my accent?’ she said, moving closer. ‘Most people don’t.’
‘It’s there,’ he lied, knowing that his knowledge of her country of birth had a great deal more to do with his research into her place in the Della-Bosca hierarchy than with any residual twang of an Australian accent.
She’d come to work at the clinic three years ago, obviously chasing the money and the high life it could provide her with. She’d hit pay-dirt right off, setting up with Della-Bosca and being swept along in her rise to celebrity and fortune. And now she was the successor to the throne. Nature’s handmaiden in a world where beauty was paramount. Where fakery was king and no cost was too great.
‘Why try to lose such a distinctive accent?’ he asked, although he already knew the answer.
She shook her head, as if searching for a reason. ‘It was too distinctive. It was easier to be accepted into society here without always answering questions about where I came from.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s all.’
Fake, he thought. Just like the rest of her.
She looked up at him.
‘Mr Demakis—’ she began.
‘Loukas,’ he corrected, setting his voice to satin-smooth again. He’d wasted too much time, and he’d almost lost her once. It was time to take charge of the conversation again. ‘Call me Loukas.’
She paused over that for a second, her top teeth gently raking over one glossy lower lip, almost as if the idea was strangely uncomfortable and needed to be come to terms with.
‘Okay…Loukas,’ she said finally, with a subtle nod of assent. ‘What is it that brings you to the Saving Faces Foundation Gala? I can’t remember your name on the guest list. Did you accompany someone here?’
He allowed himself a smile as he registered her continued interest. He hadn’t lost her after all. She was still curious, still wanting to know more about him, still feeling the same physical tug of attraction that he felt too, and that would make his job that much easier. ‘No. I came alone.’
Her head tilted fractionally. ‘Then why are you here?’
‘Just one reason,’ he said, taking advantage of a passing waiter to rid her of her neglected glass. Then he took her right hand, lifting it until it was at her shoulder level between them before holding his palm flat against hers, interlacing their fingers together. He watched her widening eyes flit to their joined hands before finding his once more. ‘But it’s a very, very good one.’
‘Oh?’ she said, her voice a husky whisper, her blue eyes wary yet intrigued, her breathing but a shadow. ‘And what might that be?’
Her faintly spicy feminine scent stirred his senses as his fingers curled between hers, and he drank in the woman before him. Blue eyes, high cheekbones, and a tendril of honey-coloured hair trailing loose from its sleek coil, kissing her neck wherever it touched in soft teasing waves.
His hunger built. That would soon be him, kissing the skin of her throat, kissing her slick, sweet lips, kissing every last inch of her until she cried out for release. And it would be no hardship to give it to her.
‘Can’t you tell?’ he said as his free arm circled around her and he spun her with him onto the dance floor. ‘I came here to meet you.’
It was the wrong answer.
His answer should have been couched in terms of wanting to support the foundation, of wanting to help children with shattered faces and fractured spirits to rebuild their lives and make them whole again. He should have been here to applaud the work of a great doctor and a worthy cause.
It was definitely not the answer she’d expected from a man who seemed dangerously threatening, at times resentful, and more often than not antagonistic. It wasn’t the answer she’d wanted. He was hiding something behind those hard brown eyes, so shiny and impenetrable they might have been French polished. What was his real purpose? Why was he really here?
And yet, as he steered her expertly around the dance floor, his firm body an aching whisker from hers, somehow his words fed into her soul, fed those dark secret places until they pulsed into life. While her brain screamed to her that this was mad, that this was unwise, her body played a different tune.
Her body liked his words.
Her senses welcomed his message.
And her flesh wanted him closer still.
With each step he took her further away from the life she knew. With each whirl she felt inexorably, utterly, spun further away from her clinical—practical—medical background. In his arms she felt reckless, a little wild; she felt good.
He didn’t speak, and she didn’t mind. She doubted she could string two words together right now. Besides, she was too busy enjoying the unfamiliar sensations of being held by the best-looking man in the room.
His breath glided past her ear, soft and luxuriant, and she felt him draw her even closer. Her heart seemed to stop as their bodies met, the splayed hand at her waist forcing them into contact from chest to thigh, their movements on the dance floor setting up a sensual friction between them, his musky cologne like an invitation, beckoning her to nestle closer.
The music, the charged atmosphere, his body against hers—it was all so intoxicating. His lips nuzzled at her ear and she tilted her head into his caress, unashamedly seeking more of the warm, tingling contact he was offering.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he murmured softly, and the warm shimmer of sensation bloomed into a wave of heated sensuality that rolled over her and left her breathless.
She knew he was attracted to her, had sensed he was. His eyes contained secrets and mysteries, but his desire had broken through with a raw intensity that couldn’t be ignored. And yet it was still such a powerful aphrodisiac to hear him say the words.
Everyone was beautiful here. There wasn’t a woman there tonight whose looks didn’t dazzle, whose bodies weren’t centrefold-worthy, whose smiles weren’t toothpaste-commercial-perfect. And yet, of all the women in the room, he’d said those words to her!
The hand at her waist stroked higher, breaching the low backline of her gown and startling her with its heated touch. He traced his fingers across her exposed skin, setting fires that burned with lightning bolt impact deep within her flesh and started spot fires low down inside.
The only part of logic that remained in her mind told her she was being seduced, that this was seduction at its most potent, and that this man was a master of the art. But, beyond that recognition, logic was no help to her now—not when she was being held captive by the spell he’d woven around her. Not when she was being swept off her feet.
‘I want to make love to you.’
She gasped. His directness shocked at the same time as it delighted, sending coiled messages through her nerve-endings to prepare herself for coupling even before she’d had a chance to assimilate his offer.
What should she do? She could hardly take offence. Not when her own body hungered for the same outcome, was even now preparing itself, tingling with expectation.
His lips brushed over her earlobe and she raised her chin to give him better access. He took it, his mouth gliding over her throat, turning her nipples achingly tight.
Vaguely she was aware of the music drifting to a conclusion, of couples around them moving apart.
‘Well?’ he whispered in her ear, his deep voice another layer of seduction, another caress. ‘Make love with me, Jade. Make love with me now—tonight.’
Something about the way he said her name wove its way deep into her senses, trailing a promise of things to come like a silken ribbon tugging insistently and irresistibly around her heated core.
He wanted to make love to her. To hear his words had sent her into a heady spin. Just the very thought of making love with this man was intoxicating. Because she knew what her body wanted. It wanted her to answer in the affirmative.
Was it wrong to want to? Was it wrong to want to give in to the desires that were besetting her? Wrong to give in to the forces of passion that were swirling around her—through her?
There should be one thousand reasons why not. There should be reasons clamouring for attention, pounding on her brain for supremacy. But right now none of them could be found, and rational thought was so heavily weighted with pure physical need that it threw up arguments instead about why she should make love with him. Arguments like, how could it possibly be wrong when it felt so damned right?
She lifted her head and looked into his eyes, felt the passion and the need, and knew that she couldn’t bring herself to lie. She couldn’t say no. And yet neither was she able to release herself totally from the constraints of her own upbringing. She’d never been the sort of person who did this sort of thing—meeting up with strangers and agreeing to make love with them.
And yet here she was…
‘You’re a very magnetic man,’ she said, understating the facts by a factor of ten. ‘And I admit I’m attracted…’
‘But?’ he urged.
‘But I’m not protected,’ she heard herself say—the most honest thing she could think of under the circumstances.
Something flared into life in his eyes, something that told her he wasn’t disappointed at the naïveté of her confession, that his need was barely contained, let alone extinguished.
He let his arm peel slowly from around her back, instead winding it through hers and taking her hand as he led her from the floor. ‘Allow me to take care of that.’
Despite the rush of cool air as they’d pulled apart, moist heat pooled heavy and insistent between her quivering thighs. Her heart thumping, she forced her legs to keep walking to the beat of the pounding in her veins, forced her melting spine to hold her erect. He was leading her somewhere private. He was leading her somewhere to make love to her.
Her breath tripped in her throat. Had she meant to do that? Had her non-committal answer been designed to give him the chance to take the decision out of her hands? So that she would get what she wanted by default?
Somehow he negotiated her through the room. The strain of knowing she’d landed herself in this position was threatening to shatter the plastic smile masking her face; the anticipation of what was to come was urging her to move even faster. The crowd was thinning out, people were spilling out into the terraces, and by now there would no doubt be a pool full of skimpily clad young women offering their wares, ready to take on all comers.
Guests had drifted off into sheltered corners of the garden, or even not so sheltered ones, for their assignations. She’d never been comfortable with this side of celebrity life here in Beverly Hills—and yet wasn’t that what she was now doing herself? Searching for privacy, seeking out what amounted to a love-nest with someone little more than a stranger? Did she really want to be doing this?
Whether he sensed her reluctance or was merely giving in to the relative quiet and darkness of a sheltered doorway some distance away, she found herself spun back against panelled wood as his mouth crashed down on hers.
His lips were warm, his mouth was hot, and what he did to her senses sent her temperature rocketing off the scale and forced any returning logic to flee. She’d never before been bombarded with sensations such as these, never before been subjected to the overwhelming drive of passion. And never before could have imagined herself giving in to it. But then, she’d had no idea…
His hands cupped her behind and she was pulled, full-length, up against his body, the clear evidence of his need pressing into her between them. She gasped into his mouth as she realised his evident size, felt his inherent power. Soon that power would be unleashed within her. She was melting down from the feel of his hands on her, from the touch of his lips, from the anticipation of what was to come.
He drew his head back the merest fraction, his breathing as ragged and choppy as hers. ‘What’s behind that door?’ he said, his voice husky with desire, his words laced with need.
‘The library,’ she whispered back. ‘But it should be locked.’
One hand left her for the moment it took to test the handle. It gave with the barest snick. Even in the gloom she could see the spark of his eyes gleaming down on her, as if he was closer to achieving some prize. Her heart fluttered as the realisation hit her. She was the prize. He wanted her and soon he would have her.
Instead of fear, her expectation cranked up another notch. This feeling was mutual. Because he wasn’t the only one who was going to get something out of tonight.
Tonight she would have him too.
His lips came down to meet hers again, this time in a softer caress, his lips massaging hers, his tongue a brief graze across her teeth, and she let herself slide into his delicious touch. The man was good enough to eat, and she planned to relish every taste.
Loukas turned her then, and silently they slipped into the void opening up behind them. Gently he pressed her back against the wall. Softly he pushed the door closed alongside her. Another tiny snick, but another huge moment. Because that door closing meant that there was no changing her mind.
It meant there was no going back.
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