by Susan Napier
‘Rather like having a personalised number-plate strapped to your finger,’ murmured Benedict maliciously. ‘Distinctive and gratifyingly easy to trace.’
Vanessa’s nerve broke, her hand lifting in a helpless warding-off gesture. ‘Mr Savage, I—’
He caught her hand in an unpleasantly tight grip and returned it to the table. ‘Is this your dessert arriving with my drink? It looks delicious.’
Vanessa looked at the sticky chocolate concoction placed before her. What had made her mouth water fifteen minutes ago now made her feel ill.
‘What’s the matter? Digestion playing up?’ Benedict taunted over the top of his whisky glass.
Gotcha! his expression said, and like an automaton Vanessa picked up her spoon, deciding she would eat the damned thing if it killed her. Perhaps it would be better if it did!
The decision was taken out of her hands when Benedict intercepted her first spoonful by guiding it, not to her own mouth but to his.
‘Mmm, whisky and chocolate, a heady combination...’
She watched mesmerised when his lips slowly parted and his tongue curled under the bowl of the spoon as he took the spoon into his mouth. Her pulse began to thump against the fingers that had encircled her wrist. There was something disturbingly erotic about the way he fed from her hand. His jaw flexed, cheeks hollowing as he sucked the smooth chocolate mousse from the spoon. He seemed to take an inordinate length of time about it, although it was only a few seconds of real time, and when he released the spoon his tongue ran lightly across his upper lip, collecting the residual sweetness. Helplessly she wondered what his mouth had felt like on hers. Had he licked her as delicately and sensuously as he’d feasted on the chocolate? A tingle shot through her body and her lips parted in unconscious imitation of his actions. Her eyes rose, to be captured by his, a fiercely knowing look in them that made her want to sink through the floor.
She knew she was blushing wildly and she looked hurriedly at Richard but he was content, enjoying his own serving of apple pie, blissfully unaware of the sizzling tension across the table. Oh, Richard! She felt a fleeting sense of despair for something slipping irretrievably beyond her grasp.
She looked nervously back at Benedict. His eyes had shifted from grey to blue and for the first time she appreciated the true meaning of the phrase ‘looking blue murder’.
He looked as if he could cheerfully throttle her, and yet there was another emotion there that was even more terrifying, a tigerish gleam of primitive masculine triumph that hinted that it wasn’t her mere death that he was contemplating.
Oh, God, surely she hadn’t made any reckless promises to him in the throes of drunken passion? Surely he couldn’t expect to hold her to anything she might have said or done in a state of alcoholic irresponsibility?
‘Mr Savage—’
His smile was cruelly brilliant at her breathless plea. ‘Oh, call me Ben, please...after all, you’re off duty tonight and that makes us equals. Besides, such overt formality is rather silly in the circumstances, isn’t it—Vanessa...?’
Somehow he made her name redolent with sin, the ‘s’s sliding slowly off his tongue like lazy serpents and coiling seductively around her throat, making it difficult to breathe, let alone defend herself.
‘I—’
‘One taste just isn’t enough...may I have another? I’ve just discovered an insatiable appetite for your delights.’
He was looking at her mouth and for a moment she misunderstood his husky plea and glared at him in seething outrage.
‘The chocolate mousse, Nessie,’ he clarified limpidly, guiding her hand with gentle force back to her plate, his forearm brushing the outer curve of her breast as he made her dip and lift the spoon again to his mouth.
She let the handle go and was relieved when he released her without fuss to take hold of it himself.
‘You may as well eat the whole thing,’ she said, shoving the plate sourly in his direction, realising that his tormenting had only just begun. Well, she might have to take it but she didn’t have to like it. If he claimed they were equal then she was going to act it by asserting what little pride she had left. ‘And please don’t call me by that ridiculous nickname.’
His eyebrows rose, deliberately misunderstanding her. ‘Nickname? You mean Van? I must admit, it is rather terse and unattractive.’
Richard looked up at the mention, his handsome brow wrinkling with concern as he regarded her irritated expression. ‘Don’t you like it? But all this time...why on earth didn’t you say—?’
‘No, I meant Nessie—as he knows very well!’ Vanessa struggled not to let her resentment at Benedict spill over on to the only innocent party at the table. ‘It makes me sound like somebody’s old nanny.’
‘I was thinking more in terms of the Loch Ness monster,’ said Benedict glibly, taking another leisurely swallow of her dessert. ‘You know—mysterious, elusive, appearing when you least expect her...’
‘Sounds like rotten butler material to me, Savage,’ Richard joked.
Benedict looked at him with a pleasant smile that Vanessa instantly distrusted.
‘On the contrary, it makes her ideal. “The noblest service comes from nameless hands, and the best servant does his work unseen”.’
‘Ovid again?’ Richard showed that his memory was much better tuned than his jealous instincts.
‘Oliver Wendell Holmes. I’m sure the quotation must be in all the best butler manuals, isn’t it, Vanessa?’
She looked him dead in the eye and smiled crisply. ‘Why, yes, right next to the one that says that few men are admired by their servants; “Many a man has been a wonder to the world, whose wife and butler have seen nothing in him that was in the tiniest bit remarkable”.’
His narrow mouth curved in droll appreciation, as if he knew the extent of dramatic licence she had taken with the quotation. ‘I think I’d rather settle for being a wonder to my wife and unremarkable to the world. A much more comfortable affair.’
‘”Affair” being the operative word, since you don’t have a wife,’ she shot sceptically back. He was already a wonderboy in the architectural world so it was unlikely that any wife he took would have any choice but to accept that most of his passion was devoted to his work.
He inclined his head. ‘Not at the moment, no. So that only leaves my servants to practise on, doesn’t it? Tell me, Vanessa, what more do I have to do to inspire your admiration?’
If he thought to make her blush with his silky invitation he had another think coming, although it was a struggle to resist a torrid rush of blood to her head. What more? Was he smugly waiting for her to say what a wondrous lover she had found him?
‘Clean your own shoes, perhaps?’ she ventured with poisonous sweetness.
He pulled a sour face. ‘Actually I had something a bit more challenging in mind. I’m sure there are far more stimulating things you can find for me to do with my hands,’ he replied with a diabolical innocence, this time succeeding in making her pinken. He leaned back in his seat like a sleekly satisfied cat. ‘You see, Richard, Vanessa and I actually have a symbiotic relationship which works extremely well for both of us, so if you were hoping to gain a butler for yourself by stirring up discontent you’re out of luck.’
Richard gave Vanessa a fond grin. ‘I like to think I already have one, thank you.’
Vanessa sensed the body next to her tighten, but there was no hint of anything but lazy humour in the voice that drawled blandly, ‘Purely at my pleasure, I feel constrained to point out. I’m the one with first call on her loyal and devoted services and I can truthfully state that she is the most obliging creature I’ve ever had under me. In fact her eagerness to please gives new meaning to the phrase “the butler did it”....’
His sheer audacity took Vanessa’s already ragged breath away. She could see that he was working himself into a dangerous mood, Richard’s complacent ignorance acting as a goad rather than the soothing tranquilliser she might have expected it to be.
It seemed to make no difference to him that she had obviously not told a soul about what had happened. She knew, and that was enough. Richard was good-natured almost to a fault but he wasn’t stupid and even he was going to realise that there was more than light-hearted banter going on here if Benedict continued in the same provocative vein. The trouble was, taken at face value, there was nothing in his comments she could object to without bringing the whole embarrassing business out in the open, she thought wretchedly.
‘Her insistence on making beds, for one,’ Benedict continued relentlessly. ‘I thought that sort of thing was against the butlers’ unwritten code of rights but Vanessa seems to invent her own rules as she goes along.’
Richard laughed. ‘I believe it’s called job flexibility these days. So you approve of her game of musical beds? When she first told me I thought she was mad, but when you think about it it does make a nutty kind of sense.’
Benedict’s sharply indrawn breath was audible and there was a distinctly grim edge in his voice as he enquired gently, ‘In what way, would you say?’
‘Well, for myself, I wouldn’t like to swap beds every night, but, as Van pointed out, she’s always lived in other people’s houses so she’s never developed any possessive hang-ups about where she sleeps. And in time-and-motion terms I suppose you can’t get more efficient than airing a bedroom in your sleep. I’ve got a reasonably large place myself and my mother is constantly complaining about the amount of effort it takes to keep the spare rooms from going musty with disuse. I tell her she should take a leaf out of Van’s book, but she says that it would be too much like living in a hotel. Of course, Van says that’s exactly what she’s doing—except she doesn’t have to worry about paying the bill!’
Richard laughed again and Vanessa smiled weakly as the laser-like blue gaze, intensified by the glass lenses, swung back in her direction. So now he had his explanation. And without her having to say a word.
‘Vanessa can be very witty, although her sense of humour sometimes leaves a bloody lot to be desired,’ came the biting reply after a moment’s screaming pause, but Richard’s attention had already been distracted.
‘Oh, Van, I see Nigel Franklin leaving over there—remember I said I wanted a quick word with him about a mare he’s sending over tomorrow? Would you mind? I won’t be a moment...’
Vanessa was aghast at the prospect of his desertion at such a critical moment. ‘Oh, but—’
‘Of course we don’t mind.’ Benedict cut across her stammer. ‘Don’t worry, Richard, I know how to keep Vanessa well-entertained.’
Vanessa glumly watched him go.
‘Perhaps you’re not so as well-matched as I thought, after all. Rather thick, isn’t he?’
Her dark eyes flared defensively. ‘No, just uncomplicated.’
The dark head nodded. ‘I see...you mean boring.’
‘He is not boring!’
‘Maybe not below table-level, but then, who am I to judge?’
She bridled with fury. ‘I was picking up my fork!’ she spluttered.
He sipped his whisky, flaunting his scepticism. ‘You were hiding from me.’
‘Do you blame me?’ She made no further attempt to deny it. ‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist...resist...’ Her angry words tapered off as his brows arched.
‘Expecting you to admit the truth?’
His smug coolness was infuriating. ‘Gloating! Ruining my evening with Richard!’
‘Is that what I’m doing?’
‘Yes!’
She might have known that would please him. His amusement was tinged with malice. ‘Don’t you think you deserved a salutary lesson in the dangers of lying?’
‘I didn’t lie...exactly,’ she faltered.
‘We both know what a specious defence that is,’ he dismissed contemptuously. ‘You had every opportunity to correct my mistaken impressions and you didn’t. Instead you trotted out that ridiculous ghost story to obscure the issue—tried to make me feel so much like a fool that I doubted my own perceptions. Well, now is the time to make good your numerous sly omissions. And let me warn you—you’d better make it very good!’
‘Here?’ She looked nervously around. The tables weren’t very widely spaced and there were quite a few people here whom she knew. Their conversation had already attracted some curious glances and she hated the idea of generating food for local gossip.
‘You had your chance in private and you fudged it,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘How often can I expect to find you in my bed?’
‘For heaven’s sake, keep your voice down!’ agonised Vanessa.
To her chagrin he immediately lowered his voice to a thready whisper, leaning intimately close so that she could hear. ‘Why in the hell didn’t you just simply explain your nightly gypsy routine to me? You had no qualms about everyone else knowing. Did you think I’d take exception to an unconventional solution to an understandable problem? For God’s sake—I’d have been more inclined to congratulate you for taking such good care of my property!’
‘It wasn’t that simple—’ Vanessa hissed back.
‘Why? Because I thought you were an expensive call-girl? You should have been flattered, Flynn.’
She recoiled. ‘That’s such a typically male thing to say!’ she said furiously. ‘You think a woman who sells the use of her body to strangers is someone I should envy? You think prostitutes do what they do for pleasure?’ Her voice was choked with revulsion. She had been tainted with that acid brush of contempt once before and the mere memory of it was enough to eat into the scars covering the old wounds.
He looked deeply into her smouldering gaze, his fury stilling at what he saw in the uncertain black depths. ‘I’m sorry,’ he admitted gently. ‘That was a stupid thing for me to say. But I wasn’t making a serious social comment, I was just trying to get a rise out of you by being flippant.’
The admission didn’t calm her. In her mind she was still fighting that helpless sense of oppression. ‘I would never prostitute myself,’ she denied fiercely. ‘Not for anything or anyone...not for any amount!’
‘I know.’
He was no longer angry, she realised with a sting of shock, at least not in the way he had been a few minutes ago. Instead there was a steely determination in his steady gaze that made her swallow hard, suddenly wondering how much her knee-jerk reaction had revealed to him.
He went on, adding to her shock by admitting frankly, ‘But I can’t deny that it’s a common male fantasy—to be seduced by a beautiful stranger who conveniently vanishes afterwards—all pleasure and no responsibility. In real life we all know it doesn’t happen that way but we don’t have to worry about that when we weave our fantasies. After all, sexual fantasy is the safest sex there is. I’m sure that many women enjoy the reverse of that particular male fantasy in the privacy of their own minds—’
‘I don’t,’ Vanessa interrupted stoutly, trying to stop him before the conversation got totally out of hand.
‘Oh? Then what’s your favourite sexual fantasy, Vanessa?’ He leaned his chin on his hand, that steely glint belying his coaxing expression.
‘None of your business,’ she said stiffly, bewildered by his swift change of tactics. If he was intent on keeping her off-balance he was doing a damned good job.
‘It is if I figure in it,’ he mocked her.
‘Never in a million years!’ Vanessa spat out and he laughed softly.
‘You must have been disappointed, then, when you woke up so unexpectedly in my arms?’
She had a fleeting flashback to lean, muscled limbs and rampant masculinity. ‘But I didn’t wake up, did I?’ she said bitterly. ‘If I had a fantasy, it certainly wasn’t to be preyed upon by some...some unscrupulous incubus...’
‘Given the state I was in I doubt whether I fitted the profile of a demon lover, either literally or figuratively,’ he murmured.
Did he mean that he’d been so carried away with lust, it had all been over in a trice? Strangely,
that thought was even more mortifying. Vanessa had punished herself over and over with speculation that he had enjoyed her helpless body at length and at leisure. She had tossed and turned every night, haunted by the wicked images. Oh, God, if you looked at it like that she was having sexual fantasies about him!
‘That’s a rather odd word to use, though—incubus,’ he mused thoughtfully. ‘Are you sure you’re not getting mixed up with something else?’
‘I know what an incubus is,’ Vanessa snapped. Now he was calling her ignorant on top of everything else!
‘So do I. A demon who makes love to sleeping women. Is that what you’re accusing me of—taking advantage of you while you slept?’
‘I’d been drinking—you must have realised that; if I’d been in my right mind I would never have acted that way—’ Out of the corner of her eye she saw Richard turning away from the tubby figure of Nigel Franklin and his two Asian guests.
‘Acted what way?’ Benedict persisted.
She glared at him, conscious of Richard’s approach. ‘If I knew that I wouldn’t be worrying about it, would I?’
‘Worrying about what?’ He continued to be deliberately obtuse as he followed her gaze, watching Richard dip and curve between the tables, pausing to murmur a friendly greeting here and there.
‘For goodness sake, what do you care?’ she said, smiling brilliantly in relief as Richard neared the table.
‘You’d be surprised,’ Benedict murmured, turning his back on the other man and rising to his feet to block his view of Vanessa’s face. ‘But you’re right, this isn’t the time or place. We’re too exposed here.’ He let her savour her brief taste of freedom before adding succinctly, ‘What we need is a bit of natural cover.’ He raised his voice and extended his hand. ‘Dance?’
Before she could refuse he had reached down and pulled her out from the banquette, whisking her past the surprised Richard and through the archway into the adjoining room. Applying a delicate pressure to her captured elbow, he spun her deftly against his body and began to move to the throbbing music that poured out of discreetly placed speakers. Several young couples were rocking freely to the beat but Benedict ignored them as he wove a more conservative pattern across the floor, one hand cupping her shoulder-blade, the other firmly pressing hers against his chest.
