“Nor do I. Look, this isn’t exactly the right time to talk about this—how about if we discuss it later?” His expression changed again, and without giving her a chance to answer, he was telling her to eat her food.
Whatever expectations Stacie might have had of the evening, the reality of it was something she’d remember for the rest of her life, no matter what happened with Cam later. Far from being the wallflower she’d half-expected to be—believing that her escort would circulate among any other unattached female guests—she was the partner of one of the two most handsome men there. And he went out of his way to put her at her ease.
An attentive companion and a more than merely competent dancer, Cam remained with her for the entire evening. She was sure it was her imagination, but while they were dancing he seemed to make a point of holding her awfully close—not that she was complaining. She’d never felt anything like this before, and could only wonder how she’d got to the age of thirty-one without finding out what it was like to be held by a man who made her feel so acutely aware of what it was to be a woman. He was simply intoxicating—enough, even, to help her to forget how foolish she’d felt earlier.
A couple of hours into the party, having made a quick trip back to her room to freshen her lipstick and ensure that her hair was still behaving, Stacie was about to descend the staircase again when she saw something that struck her as rather odd. Beth was opening the front door to let in a late arrival. The woman was stunningly attractive—from her vantage point, Stacie could see that she was a couple of inches taller than Beth, with a lissom, well-toned physique and thick, dark-brown waves that just brushed her shoulders. She was attired in a long-sleeved evening gown in midnight blue, the figure-hugging bodice fashioned in lace and the flowing skirt a subtle swirl of satin that fell from the hip.
However, it was Beth’s reaction to her that caused Stacie to slow down slightly, a small frown creasing her brow. There was something almost deferential about the way she greeted this latest guest, and though it niggled at Stacie, she decided it must have been the angle from which she was viewing the scene. However, when she heard the opening exchange between the two women, it made her wonder.
“Good evening, Mi—”
“Shh, not here, Beth,” the other woman said quickly, with a brief shake of her head and a tiny frown. “I’m so sorry I’m late. Sometimes, very important people have no concept of the passage of time—and not only that, Guy was delayed as well, so he’s only just been able to drop me off. I told him I’d get a cab, but he insisted—he says we get so little quality time together these days that every minute counts. He’s given me the rest of the weekend off, though, so I’m staying over here with him. Unfortunately, due to pressure of work, he can’t come to the party himself—he asked me to convey his apologies.” Her lips curved in a wry smile of apology. “He hoped you’d understand, but it’s to do with the Royal Household, and in cases like that, the word no doesn’t exist.”
“It’s quite all right, Ros. The party’s still going strong.”
“It sounds like it. Anyway—congratulations, and thank you for inviting us. What you’ve accomplished—it’s an incredible achievement. I, for one, am completely in awe—I can’t even imagine where to begin writing a novel.”
The two women shared a hug, then Beth turned and caught sight of Stacie as she reached the foot of the stairs. “Ros, let me introduce you—Ros Edwards, Stacie Matheson. Stacie’s Cam’s friend and she’s staying with us for a few days.”
Close up, Ros Edwards was not only very attractive—she carried herself with a confidence and cool self-assurance Stacie hadn’t often seen in other women. She was perhaps a handful of years Stacie’s senior. Her handshake was firm, and gave Stacie a sense of contained strength. And in spite of the smile, there was something about her guarded, calmly assessing gaze that told Stacie that very little would get past this enigmatic woman.
Earlier in the day, Alex had talked about her in relation to some sort of “special job”—looking at her, Stacie wondered exactly what that special job was, given what she’d overheard about this Guy, who was both the woman’s boss and her uncle. There was something about the wariness in Ros’ eyes that put Stacie on edge—it wasn’t the woman herself, it was more the thought that the wariness was there because Ros Edwards had seen a side of life that people like Stacie couldn’t even begin to imagine.
At that moment, Cam and Alex appeared. Both of them greeted Ros with a hug and a kiss that spoke of long-time familiarity, but Stacie only had a moment to feel left out before Cam turned to her, to take her hand in his and draw her into the conversation as well, as they walked back towards the ballroom to re-join the party.
The invitations had apparently said carriages at midnight—a rather quaint term to let the guests know when they should arrange their transport home—and a mere ten minutes after that time, Stacie found herself with just Cam and the Lombards for company. They were all together in the family room—the musicians had departed earlier, and the caterers would be returning in the morning to tidy up, along with a cleaning company to make good any remaining mess. For now, it was just the four of them in the house, sharing a final bottle of champagne before heading for bed.
“All in all, I think that went pretty well,” Alex commented, once they’d all made themselves comfortable. “Did you have a good time, Stacie?”
She looked at the way Beth was held in his arms, seated on his lap, her head nestled close to his—it was such an intimate image that Stacie almost felt like a voyeur. “I had a wonderful time, Alex—thank you for inviting me. I’ve never been to a party quite like it before.” Suddenly feeling gauche and provincial again, she focused on the glass of champagne in her right hand.
Warm, masculine hands gently removed the glass from her grasp. She looked at Cam, who was now seated next to her, and put up no resistance when his arm went around her and guided her closer to him.
Like Alex, he had removed his jacket. With his bow tie loosened and his waistcoat hanging open, he was a shining example of casual male chic at its lip-licking finest. If only she had the right to snuggle up to him the way her body clamoured to.
“Relax, honey,” he whispered in her ear. “Time to unwind. Come here.”
Stacie slipped off her shoes—beautiful though they were, the spindly heels were playing havoc with her ankles after being on her feet for most of the evening—and let herself be drawn in to rest at his side. She was barely aware of Alex’s quiet departure, his sleepy wife cradled gently in his arms as he bade them goodnight and left.
“I really have had a wonderful time, Cam,” she said with quiet pleasure, laying a hesitant hand on his flat stomach, half her mind wondering what it would feel like to unfasten a couple of shirt buttons and touch his bare skin instead.
“So have I, honey.”
She felt a fleeting touch to her hair. A kiss maybe? It was certainly a fanciful thought…and one she had to admit she liked.
“I don’t want it to end just yet, Stacie. Look at me.”
“You want to have that talk.”
“Yes, but that’s just part of it.”
Compelled just by his voice to obey, she lifted her head and as Cam’s fingers flipped a flimsy strap off her shoulder, his mouth claimed hers in a deeply sensual kiss that coaxed her lips into parting and allowing his tongue to flirt dangerously with hers.
Oh, this felt way too good—she was responding far too hungrily, too needily, to this man. Wild images filled her mind, of him taking her up to the bedroom, of her limbs entwined with his, his magnificent body—and it would be magnificent, her fingers curling into his shirt told her that—covering hers, one hand pinning her wrists to the bed while his other stroked and caressed her, his mouth never leaving hers.
When she felt the warmth of his hand cradling her face, holding her in place so that he could continue to kiss her with that achingly sweet, controlled fierceness, Stacie knew she’d lost the battle—a battle that, truth be known, had
been lost before it even started.
And if he was a Dom? Stacie felt her pussy ripple at an idea that appealed to something very basic that had been stretching and stirring into life ever since she’d first read Beth’s book.
Too much, too soon! The voice was in her mind, that little spark of common sense that hadn’t yet deserted her. If he was a Dom, if she let herself develop feelings for him—and you aren’t already on the way to doing just that?—she could be letting herself in for a whole heap of trouble. Had she really fallen in lust in just a day?
“I know you’ve just come out of a pretty shitty relationship, but I would like to see you. Is it too soon?”
Stunned, Stacie slowly shook her head. Was he really asking her out? Yes, of course he was, she could understand English, she’d spoken it all her life. “No, not at all.”
“Good. Now before you say anything else, we do need to have that talk, Stacie.” His growling purr of a voice was thick with need of a different kind. “About the characters in Beth’s book.”
“The resemblance that isn’t coincidental, right?”
“Right. As you pointed out, when it comes to physical appearances, Beth’s characters are very loosely, but evidently recognisably, based on the three of us.”
Ah. Then this would be where he told her that their characteristics—their sexual proclivities among them—bore no relation to their real-life counterparts. Or they did. At that precise moment, Stacie wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted the answer to be.
“And?” she prompted carefully.
“And…there are certain other things about me that you need to know, and you’ll need time—”
To hell with time. “I need you.”
Did that treacherous, urgent whisper really belong to her? Whether it did or not, it spoke the truth—she needed Cam Fraser. She didn’t need to know whatever it was he was going to tell her, whatever it was that she’d need time for. The attraction had been growing all evening…all day. He was awakening things inside her, wants and needs she’d never realised she had, and it was all mixed up with what she’d read in Beth’s novel.
She needed to talk to Beth—the last scrap of sanity she had left demanded it, because even if the writer wasn’t into the lifestyle she’d written about, she knew about it, and something about this man was now telling Stacie that she needed to know about it too. How she would start that conversation she had no idea, but instinct was telling her that Beth was the key to finding out more.
“Stacie, I’ve never been one to beat around the bush. I want you. If we were anywhere else, I’d be doing my damnedest to get you into bed tonight—“
“You think I’d argue?”
He cursed, loudly and colourfully. Stacie wondered if she’d said the wrong thing—maybe he liked his women to play a bit more hard-to-get. And why didn’t she like the idea of Cam with other women?
“I wish you hadn’t told me that, honey. It doesn’t make this any easier.”
“I don’t make a habit of sleeping with a man on the first date, you know.” Oh God, she didn’t want him to think she was always this easy!
“I know. I know, Stacie,” he reiterated. “I guess you feel it too. It’s just as well our first night together can’t be here. Not under Beth and Alex’s roof.”
Wow. Even as she dealt with the fact that at that this gorgeous hunk of masculinity had stated his interest in her and in so forthright a manner, another part of her admired him for the respect he was showing his friends.
And she wouldn’t have it any other way. It never even occurred to her to question her agreement with what he wanted, that she wanted to sleep with a man she barely knew—that she was going to sleep with a man she barely knew, if not here and now, then soon and…somewhere.
“I understand—and I wouldn’t feel comfortable either,” she confessed. “Would it be all right if we stayed here, like this, just a little while longer? Please?”
She didn’t need to ask him twice. In a heartbeat, she found herself lying alongside him on the sofa, daring to do what she’d dreamed of doing bare minutes earlier—first one shirt button, then the next, until she’d undone enough to reveal tanned skin over taut muscle, with a light feathering of dark-gold hair—just enough to tickle her fingers. When she ventured closer to a hard male nipple, her mouth began to water but that was as close as she got—Cam seized hold of her wrist, in a grip that was gentle but firm.
“Much further, honey, and I’ll forget my good intentions and have you right here,” he warned roughly, and with one swift movement pinned her errant hand behind her back.
Stacie’s heart raced. He was doing what she’d imagined. In a blinding epiphany that stopped her breath, she realised that this was what she’d wanted since the day she was old enough to understand what sex and relationships were all about—a man who would give her the gift of taking control of her. She moaned softly under his mouth as he kissed her again.
“I know,” he growled back, squeezing her hip. “I don’t know how the hell I’m going to sleep tonight. I know I said we’d stay here a while longer, but I have to take you up to your bed and leave you there—right now. I only have so much self-control, beautiful. It’s been spread thin all evening, and now I think it’s about to run out. The rest of our talk’ll have to wait a while.”
Stacie buried her face against his chest, stifling a nervous chuckle even as she revelled in the power of being a woman who knew she was wanted by such a formidably masculine man. “If you say so, Cam.”
Her reward was another kiss. “That’s what I like,” he said with clear approval. “A woman who does as she’s told.”
As much as the dress would allow her, Stacie ran her bare foot up his leg as she dropped a sequence of tantalising little kisses along his jaw.
“I don’t always,” she whispered against his cheek.
~~*~~
Hellfire and damnation!
When Cam arrived back in his room, he couldn’t wait to strip off and get under a cold shower in an attempt to dowse the conflagration of wild lust that was consuming him from the inside out. He’d only just managed to deliver Stacie to her room without taking a diversion to his suite and had been on the verge of congratulating himself on not giving in to his baser impulses when the little witch asked him to unzip her dress.
That was bad enough—when she turned to thank him, somehow the straps were falling down and it was only her slender arms crossed over her luscious breasts that prevented the bodice from dropping down and revealing all. He’d made his excuses and left, flinging one last look over his shoulder, only to see her bidding him goodnight with a smile that told him she knew exactly what she was doing.
Christ, she’d make one bratty sub.
No woman had ever given him such a crazy case of need before. If they’d been anywhere else, if they’d already established limits and boundaries, he’d have turned around, slammed the door shut behind him and given her an intensive course in obedience and discipline.
The thought reminded him that they hadn’t got round to the main subject he’d wanted to discuss with her. Was a real D/s relationship between them possible? He had to hope. There were no guarantees in life, but then again, she loved Beth’s novel. He’d overheard her congratulating Alex’s wife on her success and saying how much she was looking forward to reading the next volume. In the time between the release of the two books, Beth had become an accomplished sub under her Master’s expert hand—it had been Cam’s privilege to witness her development at close quarters—and it was reflected in the content of her second novel. What would Stacie make of that one?
As he dried off after nearly succumbing to frostbite under the shower, Cam reflected that his old friend was really going to rub it in when he told Alex that he was falling hard and fast for a woman he’d barely known a day.
Chapter 5
“Why don’t you and I make the most of this sunshine, get away from the cleaners and go for a walk? The boys are talking business, so they’ll
be closeted away in the office for a good while yet.”
Stacie looked up from her book to the woman who wrote it. If ever there was a woman who looked perpetually happy, it was Beth Lombard. She was dressed casually in jeans and a green sweater, with her hair gathered up in a loose ponytail. The gold chain was back around her neck. Knowing what she knew now, that Beth had written the novel she couldn’t bear to put down, Stacie wondered if there was a deeper significance to the beautiful piece of jewellery.
Although the sun was shining, the unmistakable chill of autumn was in the air. The two women set off in a companionable silence. After they’d been walking through the woods that surrounded Winterleigh for a few minutes, Beth opened the conversation.
“Alex and I were talking last night, when we went to bed. You really like Cam, don’t you?”
Stacie gave a slightly embarrassed smile. “Is it that obvious?”
Beth returned the smile easily. “Let’s just say that I think I’ve seen something in the way you look at Cam that reminds me of how I feel when I look at Alex. Men like Alex and Cam have a certain way about them, for the right kind of woman.” Her expression became slightly more serious. “I think that maybe you and I need to talk.”
It was then that Stacie realised they’d arrived in a clearing. A gentle breeze rustled the few leaves left on the trees—the only other sound to be heard was birdsong. Used to the constant barrage of noise in the city, Stacie was only too happy to let the tranquillity of nature wash around her. Even though she’d lived in the city for as long as she had, she was still a small-town girl at heart.
Beth took a seat on a fallen tree trunk, and indicated that Stacie should join her.
“This is Alex’s favourite place on the estate,” she began. “Mine, too. It’s where he proposed to me, just before last Christmas. Well,” she laughed, “he didn’t so much propose as tell me I was marrying him—but that’s what men like Alex and Cam do.”
Five words repeated in the space of moments, and they didn’t escape Stacie. “Men like Alex and Cam—that’s the second time you’ve used that phrase.”
Love Is Danger (Club Aegis Book 3) Page 7
