A Suitable Mistress

by Cathy Williams

  ‘You always seem to fold your arms whenever you’re talking to me. A psychologist would have a field-day with that little trait.’ He reached out and grasped her wrists, bringing her arms down to her sides.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘When you stand with your arms crossed like that, it looks as though you’re warding off an attack. Or else you feel ashamed of your body. Which is it?’ He was grinning but there was something else there too, lurking in the depths of his eyes.

  ‘Should I fear anything from you?’ she asked, nervously licking her lips. ‘I don’t, anyway,’ she continued quickly, just in case he came up with a retort to that one. ‘And I’m not in the least bit ashamed of my body. I admit that I wasn’t too happy with the way I looked when I moved up to London, but I’ve lost that weight now.’ She would have folded her arms again if they hadn’t still been pinned to her side. ‘I shall never be small and delicate, but that doesn’t bother me.’ She lifted her chin and looked at him and her eyes seemed to ask whether it bothered him.

  ‘Of course not; why should it bother you? I’ve never felt the slightest inclination to be small and delicate either.’ Which made her laugh.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose the women in your life would appreciate that.’ It was as well, she thought, to remind him that there was someone else involved. It was as well to introduce a touch of reality because feeling him close to her like this was doing dangerous things to her equilibrium.

  ‘There are no women in my life at the moment,’ he said softly.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Suzanne said, when she didn’t see at all. Or not much anyway. ‘And Angela?’

  ‘Ah, yes, Angela. You’ve been hinting long enough about that. There’s nothing going on between us. I respect her business skills, which is why I brought her over with me.’

  ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that she might have been harbouring a different idea?’

  His lips thinned, but he smiled. ‘I’ve set her right on that count,’ was all he said, but it was enough.

  Enough, she thought frantically, to make me deliriously happy. It doesn’t mean a thing, of course; it doesn’t mean that he’s done anything ridiculous like fall madly in love with me. Good grief, I can’t see that happening in a month of Sundays, but I’m still happy.

  ‘What a foolish idea that we were involved.’ He raised one hand and stroked the side of her face and she felt heat flare under the trail of his finger. ‘She’s a good worker but do you really imagine that she was my type? Still, I should have seen the danger signals earlier on. I thought that I was doing her a favour in giving her the biggest job of her career. Unfortunately she read more into the offer than was there.’

  ‘Poor Angela.’ Suzanne could almost begin to feel slightly sorry for the other woman.

  ‘No need to feel sorry for her,’ he said, reading her mind. ‘Her stint here will look very good on her CV.’

  ‘You mean she’s leaving?’

  ‘Her choice, not mine.’ His finger had moved from her cheek to her mouth, then back to her cheek, and she could feel her heart pounding.

  ‘But I thought that she loved the job.’

  ‘Alas, dear Angela realised that she wasn’t going to get what she had more or less banked on getting, which was me.’ His eyes hardened and this time she felt quite a bit sorrier for the other woman.

  ‘And I thought that women were the guilty ones when it came to leading men up garden paths.’

  ‘I never told Angela that what we had was ever anything more than a business relationship. Was it my fault that she misread the signals?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Suzanne muttered sarcastically, curving her fingers around his wrists and pulling his hands down to his sides. ‘I can see that you’re utterly blameless in this—as pure, in fact, as the driven snow.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ he told her. ‘I’m glad that you see my point of view.’

  Suzanne opened her lips to protest, but before she could say a word his mouth descended, covering hers, and he pinned her back against the wall. For an instant she responded with hot, enthusiastic passion, then she struggled against him, pushing him back.

  ‘What,’ she said unsteadily, ‘do you think you’re doing? ’

  He reached out and leant his hands on the wall behind her, encircling her so that she was obliged to look up at him.

  ‘What I have wanted to do for quite some time now.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said on a desperate note.

  He traced the outline of her face with his finger and didn’t say anything. His hand moved to her collar-bone and the feel of that feathery touch along her skin, following the line of her shirt collar, made her weak.

  ‘I’m not about to become another Dane Sutherland trophy before you tire of me as well and decide to move on!’

  ‘I want you, Suzie.’

  ‘You can’t just have everything you want!’

  ‘And you want me.’

  ‘You’re not listening to a word I’m saying!’

  ‘I can feel it when I touch you.’ As if to demonstrate his point, he slowly unbuttoned her shirt and exposed her breasts which were heaving underneath the lacy trappings of her bra.

  ‘Please, Dane, I think you ought to leave before we both do something we’ll regret in the morning.’ What a cliché. It could have come straight out of a third-rate movie. She fumbled, trembling, with the front of her blouse and his hands covered hers.

  ‘How could we regret something that we both want?’

  ‘I don’t believe in casual affairs, Dane. I wasn’t brought up that way. I know that that probably sounds very unsophisticated to you, but that’s just the way it is.’

  ‘So your plan is to keep yourself in pristine condition until Mr Right comes along, whenever that may be. Always hoping, of course, that he is Mr Right, because, in case it’s escaped you, people aren’t always what they appear to be. You only need to look at the divorce rate to realise that.’

  ‘Is that a case for hopping into bed with any and everyone?’ she asked, drawing away from him and walking towards the window.

  ‘Why do you think that the alternative to celibacy is promiscuity? I enjoy sex,’ he said, strolling towards her and standing behind her, following her eyes down to the dark gardens below, ‘but that doesn’t mean that I spend all my free time trying to get women to climb into bed with me.’

  ‘Not that you’d have to try very hard.’

  ‘I’m not into chasing women, nor am I into collecting trophies. I don’t personally think that that’s either a desirable or a healthy lifestyle. On the other hand, when two people get along—even if it isn’t love—and they want to sleep together, then why the hell not?’

  He made it sound so sensible. He made it sound as if any disagreement with this morally persuasive train of reasoning was tantamount to insanity.

  ‘Except that people get hurt, don’t they?’

  ‘And they don’t get hurt when there’s a wedding ring sealing the relationship?’ He laughed, and there was a cynical edge to his laughter. ‘That’s not romantic, Suzie, it’s downright naive.’

  ‘That’s me,’ she said coldly. ‘Downright naïve.’

  Or, to put it even more basically, she thought to herself, utterly stupid. Dane Sutherland was one of life’s great manipulators. He was charming, sexy, intelligent, rich. He could manipulate most people to do things that they would probably never have dreamt up on their own. It might have been true enough that he had never encouraged Angela, but he had obviously admired her working abilities enough to bring her across to London to resurrect the semi-dead company in which he had invested his money, and deep down he must have known that a relationship other than strictly business was at the back of the other woman’s mind.

  Did he imagine that falling back on the technical argument that he had never promised anything would prove his innocence?

  ‘Don’t you believe in marriage at all?’ she asked him. ‘Your father had a very happy marriage before—’
r />   ‘That’s it precisely, though, isn’t it? It proves my point even better. My father had had the experience of one good marriage behind him, yet he went ahead with blinding stupidity and got himself involved with a woman much younger than he was, who was clearly only after what his bank balance could offer.’ There was a tightness in his voice and she could imagine that he had stiffened a little.

  ‘He made a mistake.’

  ‘Which generally happens when you let your heart rule your head.’

  ‘How cold. So you intend to give the institution a miss just because your father made a mistake?’

  ‘I never said that I intended to give the institution of marriage a miss,’ he corrected her mildly. ‘I merely don’t intend to rush into it because I happen to find a woman desirable.’

  Suzanne turned around so that she was half-perched on the window-sill and looking at him. She didn’t want to have to watch that dark, angular, thrilling face, but it was difficult conducting a conversation with a disembodied voice coming from somewhere behind her. Especially a conversation which was making her angry.

  ‘And when do you propose to rush into it?’ she asked with polite disdain.

  ‘When someone suitable comes along; when I can make an unhurried, clear-headed decision that that someone is a woman who can make herself useful to the kind of lifestyle that I lead.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so impressed by your logical way of going about things, Dane. Will this suitable woman have to fill out any forms? Will she need character references?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I’m not being ridiculous, you are.’

  ‘Someone suitable’, she thought. She knew what that meant. Someone elegant, good-looking, with the right background. A thoroughbred horse, all credentials in full working order. In other words, someone who stood at the opposite end of the spectrum to her. What he wanted from her was a brief, satisfactory fling. How sweet of him to make no bones about it.

  ‘Don’t tell me that you don’t intend having sex with a man unless marriage is on the agenda.’

  ‘That is precisely what I mean. I can’t think of anything more distasteful than throwing myself into bed with a man simply for the temporary fun of it.’

  ‘What’s the matter with a bit of fun?’ He was beginning to sound a trifle on the impatient side now. Soon, she supposed, impatience would give way to boredom, when he realised that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with her. He would shrug his shoulders and walk away, knowing, no doubt, that he could find any number of drop-dead gorgeous women who would be only too glad to satisfy his desire for a bit of fun. And maybe some of them wouldn’t want anything permanent out of it either.

  She couldn’t deny that the fun he dangled in front of her would be the substance of a lifetime’s worth of memories for her, but did she really want to find herself a hopeless spinster in the years to come, sadly clutching her memories, unable to give herself to another man because no one could occupy the space that Dane Sutherland had been willing to fill for a short space of time?

  Because that, she knew, was what would happen. She was in love with him and she would only love him harder if she went to bed with him. If she stayed away, she might regret it, but she would eventually meet someone else and that element of comparison, at least, would not have to be dealt with. It all made tremendous sense to her.

  ‘When does Angela intend to leave?’ she asked, thinking it wise to change the conversation. She could feel her nails digging into her arms just as she could feel his strong, mesmeric presence trying to engulf her.

  ‘I’ve told her that she can take her time, but I doubt she’ll stay longer than a couple of months. She has good contacts in America. She should be able to find a job without any difficulty. And of course I shall give her an impeccable reference.’

  ‘What a kind gesture. But then,’ she said acidly, ‘you do specialise in kind gestures if it means alleviating your conscience.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ He ran his fingers through his hair and looked at her with restless irritation which pleased rather than depressed her. She only wished that she could rifle through her mind and come up with a few more remarks guaranteed to needle. It just wasn’t fair that she should feel this way about this man. ‘I thought we had put that particular one to rest, Suzie.’

  ‘I’m sure you have.’

  ‘But you haven’t, is that it? You still want to put me in the role of the traitor.’

  ‘I don’t want to put you in any role,’ she said sweetly. ‘I’m merely pointing out that there are a few cracks in this wonderful portrait you want to paint of yourself as the world’s greatest benefactor.’

  He smiled at her. It was such a disconcerting reaction to what she had just said that she couldn’t think where she had reached in her argument or, for that matter, where she should go from here. She just knew that that smile was doing catastrophic things to her composure.

  ‘Next you’ll be trying to convince me that you deserve a sainthood, I suppose,’ she continued, stubbornly refusing to let him see how much he was now getting under her skin.

  He continued smiling and raised his eyebrows in expectation of further developments of this line of argument.

  ‘And it is not funny!’ she burst out, wondering whether this was part of his plan to throw her completely.

  ‘No, you’re absolutely right, it’s not in the least funny. However, you might like to know that you look extremely sexy when you’re in a rage.’

  And you look extremely sexy all of the time, she thought in a dazed way.

  She wondered fleetingly why she was bothering to hold out against his considerable charm. Who cared? She had said that she would never make love with a man unless she was in love with him, and she wouldn’t be deserting that principle. Did it matter that she would end up being hurt? Wasn’t she hurting now? More to the point, did she want her epitaph to read ‘Lonely spinster who stupidly never gave in’?

  ‘I wouldn’t be in a rage if you hadn’t waltzed into my bedroom without my consent.’

  ‘My bedroom,’ he corrected her.

  ‘Oh, all right, your bedroom. Technically speaking. I do live here, though, in case you’d forgotten. At your behest, no less. I’m entitled to some privacy.’

  ‘Not when I want to make love to you.’

  Stay calm, she told herself with a drowning feeling. Hang on to your blood pressure. Try to ignore that gleam in his eyes. Get through this and you can get through anything.

  ‘Can’t you take no for an answer?’ she asked with a sensation of panic.

  ‘I don’t recall offhand ever being in that position.’

  ‘You’re the most vain person I’ve ever met in my life!’ she exclaimed, and he laughed and continued looking at her.

  ‘And you’re awfully predictable. Tell me now that I’m not throwing you into a dither.’

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t think that she could formulate a lie with any kind of coherence. She just wished desperately that he would go, because she could feel the arguments made rationally in her head a while back going down the proverbial pan. She was so vastly turned on by him that even breathing was getting to be a bit of a strain.

  ‘Tell me now that you don’t want me,’ he said in a lower, softer, more insinuating voice, and when she didn’t answer that either, because her tongue appeared to have worked its way to the roof of her mouth and was finding it impossible to move, he held her face in his hands again and bent his head very slowly down to hers.

  He kissed her gently, exploring her mouth, tasting her with the thoroughness of the connoisseur sampling some heavenly vintage.

  No struggle now. She curved her arms around his neck and was the one to deepen the kiss. He was still kissing her when he carried her to the bed, only stopping when his lips moved on, searching out new territory to set ablaze.

  He unbuttoned her shirt and through the lace of her bra his tongue flirted with her nipples, which hardened under the teasing caress.
r />   Then, when she thought that she was reaching a stage of unbearable anticipation, he disposed of her bra and she felt the wetness of his mouth surround the tight peaks of her breasts, and she pressed his head against her so that her whole body was filled with a torrent of desire that was beyond thought.

  She tugged his shirt out of the waistband of his trousers and ran her hands along the base of his back. She could feel the hard muscles under her fingers and she pushed her fingers just under the top of the waistband.

  With a groan that was a mixture of heat and urgency, he unzipped his trousers and discarded them. She heard them drop to the ground.

  In this vortex of passion that he had led her to, every sound, every movement seemed to be magnified a thousandfold.

  As he licked and caressed his way down, down to her stomach, arousing her with his leisurely exploration, she felt the moistness between her legs waiting to surround him, and it was a relief when he eased her trousers off her.

  Through half-opened eyes, she watched the dark head find its way to her womanhood, and then she closed her eyes because now she could do nothing but get lost in the exquisite sensation taking her over. She didn’t want to see, or think. She just wanted to feel.

  His hands caressed her thighs and his tongue tasted the sweetness that seemed produced for him only. She sighed and moaned and heard these little sounds of pleasure in a way that was almost disembodied, hearing them but not hearing them, aware that she had quite lost control.

  He straightened up and guided her hand to the evidence of his desire and she felt a surge of excitement fill her.

  It was only when he moved against her that excitement was replaced by panic and the rational arguments which had taken a back seat reared up with affront.

  She saw in a blinding flash how her life would be mapped out if she let him make love to her, if she let him complete his masterful conquest of her body.

  Was this what it was like when people said that they had seen their lives flash before their eyes in an instant? she thought. It must be. Except what had flashed before her eyes hadn’t been her past, it had been her future.