ONE NIGHT WITH MORELLI

by Kim Lawrence

  Happily the journey back to London didn’t take long driving in this powerful car, and Draco showed no inclination to make conversation, which was a mercy. She glanced periodically at his profile, responding to some sort of compulsion that she chose not to analyse; it was remote, his expression stony.

  She didn’t recognise the area they ended up in, a quiet and ultra-exclusive backwater. The building he drew up outside with its Georgian portico overlooked a green square. A place like this was bound to be expensive, but she was past caring.

  ‘Great.’ Eve unclipped her seat belt. ‘I’m sorry to put you to so much trouble—’ she began formally, then stopped. She was talking to an empty space.

  Draco got out of the car before the tension building in him cracked his jaw. The cynic in him wanted to believe that she knew what all those hungry little sideways glances were doing to him but he knew that she didn’t. The woman had no wiles whatsoever, which made her more dangerous. Not exactly scientific, but it worked for him and it explained the fact he was struggling to keep his normal iron control in check—she simply didn’t slot into any of the categories that women usually did.

  She caught him up halfway up the steps to the impressive entrance of the hotel. It wasn’t until she saw him insert a key into the door that the penny dropped.

  ‘This isn’t a hotel.’

  A ghost of a smile twitched his lips as he looked down at her, his height advantage even more pronounced than usual because of the step he stood on.

  ‘I love a bit of intellectual debate as much as the next man but it’s late, I’m tired and you look…’ his glance swept upwards from her feet until it stilled on her heart-shaped face, the light sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her narrow nose standing out stark against the pallor of exhaustion that tinged her skin ‘…terrible.’

  ‘You don’t look so hot yourself.’ The retort had sounded cold and cutting in her head but it emerged sounding petty and childish.

  It was also a big fat lie. The visible dark shadow on his face and the spikiness of his hair caused by his habit of running his hand back and forth across his dark head when he was exasperated did not detract in the least from his sinful attractiveness.

  Her glance drifted to his hand on the door. He had nice hands, she mused, big and strong with long, tapering fingers. She averted her eyes but the heat continued to spread through her body. There was no way in the world she was entering that house.

  ‘It’s been a long day.’

  ‘I don’t see the connection between the way I look and you not taking me to a hotel.’

  ‘I assumed, wrongly it would seem, that this would be more convenient for you.’

  ‘So you made the unilateral decision and expected me to go along with it.’ Staying the night under his roof filled her with a panic that was irrational. It wasn’t as if he was going to demand her body in payment for bed and board. ‘Call me a cab!’ she demanded, panic making her sound imperious.

  His eyes narrowed. Draco was sick of humouring her. ‘Madre di Dio!’ he gritted through clenched teeth.

  Eve stared, her startled green eyes round. His accent was so perfect that she’d almost forgotten he wasn’t British, but right at that moment his Latin heritage was pretty hard to miss, as the combustible quality she had sensed he possessed under the surface had smouldered into life—and it was pretty impressive.

  ‘Suit yourself! Spend a night in a hotel room without so much as a toothbrush but spare me the histrionics and call your own damned cab!’

  ‘I will!’ She watched him step into the hallway and without warning her annoyance melted as the sense of guilt she had morphed into embarrassed contrition as she saw the day through his eyes. Images of herself flitted through her head; she really hadn’t covered herself in glory today.

  As first impressions went, chucking her bag of lingerie samples over him took the biscuit. Then sobbing all over him in the ladies’ room, telling him God knew what; she really didn’t want to remember. And then she’d turned what was meant to be a face-saving kiss into some sort of marathon kissing competition. Just when he’d probably thought it was all over, he’d had to rescue her from wandering around alone in the depths of the Surrey countryside. Taking a deep breath, she followed him inside.

  ‘Sorry, you’re right. I’m not that woman.’ It suddenly seemed important that he know this.

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘The one I’ve been today. I don’t usually do girly crying, I don’t normally need rescuing and I can call my own cabs.’

  ‘Can you also perhaps resist the temptation to cut off your nose to spite your face?’

  Following a short silence and an internal debate to which he was not privy, she nodded. ‘Thank you. I would be grateful of a bed for the night.’ There had to be a dozen or so to spare. The place, if the hallway they stood in was any indicator, was enormous. Typically Georgian, very light, with a really beautiful staircase rising up all three floors.

  ‘If it’s not too much trouble for…?’

  He watched as she looked around as though she expected an army of servants to materialise.

  ‘Just us tonight. What’s wrong? Are you afraid of being alone with me?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ If she had an ounce of sense she would be. If she had an ounce of sense she wouldn’t be here at all; she’d be in a hotel room. Instead she had capitulated far too easily to his suggestion that she stay here—well, more than suggestion, really; he had presented it as a fait accompli.

  Eve wished she were surer of her own motives but she had a feeling that at some level her impulsive choice to stay had more to do with her hormones than any practical reasons.

  The memory of the hunger that had devoured her when they had kissed terrified her, but it also drew her and she had a horrible feeling that he knew it.

  His attitude had been take it or leave it, but underneath all that did he think they’d end up sharing a bed tonight?

  Do you, Eve?

  She pushed away the thought. ‘I just thought that someone might be waiting up for you?’

  The idea seemed to amuse him. ‘We have no live-in servants.’

  ‘So nobody like my mother, you mean?’ she fired back.

  ‘Like…?’ he echoed with a shrug. ‘I don’t know your mother and I wouldn’t dream of judging anyone by what they do.’

  She flushed at the reprimand. ‘Well, that makes you unique, or maybe you like to think of yourself as egalitarian but if your daughter announced she was marrying the boy who stacks the shelves in the local supermarket you wouldn’t be so tolerant, I suspect.’

  ‘My daughter is thirteen. I wouldn’t be happy if she said she was marrying Prince Harry. I’m curious—are you really such a cynic or is it that chip on your pretty shoulder showing again?’ As he spoke he opened a panelled door to his right and after a short angry pause she accepted the silent invitation and walked past him.

  The room they entered was not enormous. There was an original Adam fireplace filled with unlit candles, some nice artwork on the walls, and the furniture was an eclectic mix of expensive modern pieces and original Georgian antiques.

  It was simple and uncomplicated, unlike the man who lived here.

  Her covert gaze slid to Draco, who had walked straight over to a bureau and pulled out a bottle and a glass.

  ‘I like to keep it simple. Mrs Ellis, the housekeeper, is full time, but she doesn’t live in and she oversees the girls who come in, and my driver is—’

  ‘I get the picture—simple.’

  He poured himself a second finger of brandy and downed it in one gulp. ‘Sorry, nightcap?’

  She nodded. ‘Please, thank you. You have a beautiful home. Have you lived here long?’

  ‘Since last year. Before that I split my time pretty much fifty, fifty between here and
Italy, but my sister’s married a Brit and her daughter, Kate, is Josie’s age. When I was looking for a school for Josie she recommended the one Kate attends.’ He arched a brow. ‘You don’t want to know any of that, do you? What you’re really thinking is, is he going to make a pass at me?’

  She flushed to the roots of her hair and took a large sip of the brandy.

  ‘Whereas I’m standing here thinking, is she going to make a pass at me?’

  Her squeaked protest drew his lazy grin. ‘You see—it’s not so nice to have someone look at you as though they expect you to leap on them any minute, is it?’

  She held the glass in both hands and looked at him over the rim. Her eyes watered as the brandy stung her throat and pooled with a warm glow in her stomach. ‘You have a very weird mind.’

  ‘And you have a very good body, and for a designer your dress sense is…interesting.’

  An insult and a compliment. Which should she respond to? In the end she chose neither. ‘It’s late, so if you don’t mind…?’

  ‘I’ll show you the way.’

  Like everything else in the place the doorway was generous but even so Eve found herself hunching her shoulders to make herself smaller as she went through, as though touching him would ignite some invisible touch paper. Annoyed at herself, in the hallway she lifted her head and pulled her shoulders back. She was acting as though she were a victim of her own hormones; his touch would not release some sort of carnal chain reaction unless she allowed it to.

  She followed him up the deep curving staircase, her heart beating, her emotions see-sawing.

  He reached the upper hallway and, without turning, pointed to his right. ‘I’m up that way. The guest suites are that way—take your pick. Except probably the last two. Clare uses the end one when she stays over and my mother leaves a few things in the one next to it.’

  He caught her look and said, ‘Clare is my ex-wife.’

  An ex-wife who slept over: very civilised… Just how civilised, exactly? she wondered.

  ‘No, we don’t have sex.’

  Her eyes widened at this fresh evidence of his ability to read her mind.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘RELAX, I’M NOT a mind-reader, you’re just incredibly transparent and in answer to that thought nothing is going to happen between us tonight. Unless you want it to…?’

  Eve recognised it was a taunt, not an invitation, but if it had been?

  The question formed before she could stop it and dangerous thoughts swirled in her head. She felt caught between anger and… She shook her head, refusing to recognise that sensation in the pit of her stomach as excitement. The admission would open too many doors she didn’t want to look behind.

  ‘You said before you were not that woman, the one who cries and needs a shoulder, the one who gets rescued, that isn’t you.’

  She shook her head, wary of walking into some sort of trap. ‘No.’

  ‘So tell me, what is you?’

  Eve looked away, avoiding his disturbingly intent stare, her negligent shrug masking her confusion. Before today she could have replied to that question with total confidence, but today had challenged a lot of things she’d previously taken as given and now wasn’t the moment to think about them. She had to stay focused.

  On what?

  She felt a cold finger of unease trace a path up along her spine. She was only one stumbling step away from panic; she had always known her aim and gone for it… It gave her purpose, stability.

  She tilted her head back to look at him, releasing a sigh of relief as, no longer treading water, she felt her feet touch bottom. ‘I am…sensible.’

  She half expected him to laugh but he didn’t. ‘And is it fun being sensible?’

  She was fully prepared to defend undervalued common sense, but as her glance locked with his dark eyes framed by those crazily long silky eyelashes she experienced a stab of breath-snatching, heart-racing lust. It was followed by an equally fierce flash of anger that made her lash out.

  ‘I think your idea of fun and mine is very different.’

  Draco genuinely didn’t give a damn what people thought about him, which had proved an advantage over the years. Losing his temper was a distraction that he did not normally allow himself.

  He did not react to insults, it was a mindset and usually it was not a struggle for him to keep his cool, but Eve’s lip-curling contempt touched an exposed nerve and his temper spiked.

  ‘Oh, I think we might find we have some common ground, cara.’ He opened the mental door he had shut them behind and allowed the memories to come flooding in. Her small, eager hands skating over his skin, her nails digging in, the frantic little moans as she had kissed him sent a hard throb of lust slamming through his body, the strength of it making him catch his breath.

  A threat disguised as an invitation or an invitation disguised as a threat? It didn’t really matter to Eve. What mattered was her body’s response.

  It was sheer bloody-minded defiance that stopped her retreating as he took a step towards her radiating anger and arrogance and sheer maleness. Such a suggestion a short time ago would have evoked a scornful response; now it sent an illicit thrill surging through Eve’s body. She licked her lips and tasted brandy, but the buzz in her head had nothing to do with the alcohol. His dark, predatory stare was more potent and more mind-destroying than an entire bottle of liquor!

  He saw her pupils dilate, the dark centre swallowing up all but a thin rim of green, and gave a hard smile of satisfaction.

  Common sense, she called it. He called it pragmatism and he could do with some now to counteract the lust throbbing through his body. There were warning bells—there had been warning bells since the moment he first saw her.

  He’d spent the day ignoring them and as he reached out to curve a hand around the back of her head he carried on doing so, thinking instead about her lush mouth. He couldn’t remember the last time he had wanted a woman this much…the last time he had burned this way.

  It was a kind of insanity… He thought he would go insane if he didn’t have her, but she wanted him too; he could see it in the flush on her skin, the tremor in the hand she raised in a fluttery gesture to her lips and then let drop.

  But most of all it was in her eyes, her hungry eyes, so deep he could have drowned in them.

  He slid his fingers into her silky hair meeting a barrier of pins. He removed one and let it fall to the floor, and then another.

  Her eyes widened in alarm then half closed. A silent sigh left her parted lips as she breathed in and out fast and shallow, focusing on the mechanics of it, as if drawing air into her lungs and releasing it and not the fact she was floating on a sensual cloud several inches above the floor was the most important thing.

  ‘I’m not having sex with you.’ It was hard to force the words out with her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, but it needed saying as much for her benefit as his. When she did finally have sex it would be with a man she felt comfortable with, a man she could—

  ‘Good to know,’ he slurred thickly. ‘But this is okay…’ He stroked a finger softly over the skin around her ear. ‘Right?’

  It felt so right it hurt.

  She struggled to retrieve her previous thought: a man she could…? Control. She shook her head slightly and found her cheek against his palm as she thought, That sounds wrong.

  She genuinely didn’t want to control this future lover; no, she just wanted to be in control… Draco found another pin and a deep visceral shudder stronger than the rest shook her, making her body vibrate like a tuning fork.

  In control like now, mocked the voice in her head.

  She squeezed her eyes closed in an effort to close down the thoughts and felt the touch of his lips on her eyelids light as a breeze.

  Hands framing her face, he lifted
his eyes and watched as her hair succumbed to gravity and the weight of the shiny coils slid downwards in slow motion to settle against her narrow back.

  His hissing breath caused her eyes to open. Her eyelids felt heavy, but she felt light, as though she were floating; it was surreal.

  ‘This feels really strange.’

  He bared his teeth in a smile that made her shiver. ‘It’s meant to feel good.’

  She swallowed and, eyes huge on his face, whispered thickly, ‘It d-does.’

  ‘Sexy stutter.’

  Stutters weren’t sexy, but she let the comment stand; it was more empowering than she would have believed possible to have this gorgeous man telling her she was sexy.

  Again he replied as though she’d voiced her doubts. ‘It is sexy.’

  He kissed her then, slowly, deeply, his hands framing her face, his long fingers stroking her scalp. Her lips parted under the pressure and he sank deep into her mouth, taking his time, drinking her in, savouring the taste of her. The possessive thrust of his tongue made the heat that had been slowly building inside her spark and explode like a firework display.

  She wanted him more than she had wanted anything in her life. Blinded by sheer need, her control a thing of the past, Eve reached for him, rising up on her toes.

  This is so not you, Eve.

  The voice in her head was wrong because it was her and they were her fingers wrapping themselves into the fabric of his shirt and she was the one kissing him back with a wildness and ferocity that he answered with equally wild, head-spinning passion. He wrapped one hand in her hair, the other, like an iron band, he placed around her waist, lifting her off the ground as he plunged his tongue deeper into her mouth, drawing a soft mewling cry from her throat as he withdrew and repeated the process.

  She was barely conscious that they had been moving all the time, moving, walking, stumbling, kissing, his mouth on hers, his lips moving, his hands on her body sliding over fabric, under fabric, over skin, everything fuelling the wild desperation that pounded through Eve. The only thing stopping her from falling as she blindly allowed herself to be steered down the wide hallways was her grip on the fabric of his shirt at waist level. There was no underlying softness to grab as his belly was corrugated with hard muscle. When they hit a pedestal displaying a Chinese urn, the piece of porcelain went flying.