Never mind that the deal was all but sewn up a week before she’d left home. She deserved to know the truth, but how much truth about her uncle could she take?
He said carefully, ‘Peri has offered a contract to my company—Celestrial. We design satellite systems for all sorts of uses, including marine navigation. Your uncle wants to upgrade his fleets’ equipment.’
‘I see.’ She held herself rigidly. Shadows under her eyes gave them a bruised look, but she maintained a stiff dignity, trying so hard not to betray her distress he felt moved. ‘So—so what will happen now the deal’s off? Without a wedding? Will that matter to your company?’
Again he felt ashamed. Here she was struggling with her own situation, and she was worrying about his. He had no right to place any more anxiety on her head, he saw now.
He gave an easy shrug, easier than the grim reality warranted. ‘We have other clients.’
‘Oh.’ She expelled a breath. ‘Good. Well, that’s a relief, anyway.’
‘So…’ He glanced searchingly at her. ‘When you said you came out here for a holiday, you were telling the truth?’
She glanced at him and he saw with a further shock that the sudden glitter in her eyes was a wash of tears. She lowered her gaze as if she couldn’t face him and turned sharply away. ‘Yes, ’ she said in a choked voice. ‘That was it. A holiday.’
A few strands of her hair were ruffled by the breeze. The sight of her vulnerable neck in the moonlight caused something to twist in his chest. He took her shoulders and turned her gently back to face him. ‘Ariadne, listen… There’s no need to…’
A ray of light caught the sparkle of a tear on her lashes, and he felt a dismayed, incoherent wave of tenderness, but how was he, a man and a virtual stranger, to comfort her? Unable to frame the appropriate words, he bent to brush her mouth with his. It was only the briefest of touches, but the contact to his starved lips was sizzling dynamite.
She didn’t pull away. She stood absolutely immobilised as though poised on a heartbeat, her sweet face still turned up in the kiss position, her lashes fluttering down in languid expectation. For an instant the planet held its breath.
God, it had been so long. Unable to resist such enticement, he kissed her properly.
He felt the shock ripple through her slender frame. Her mouth quivered under his, and he felt the leap of response ignite in her deliciously soft, fiery lips. He pulled her hard against him, his own lips ablaze, wild to feel her breasts in friction with his chest, greedy to have all of her at once with every part of him.
He urged her lips into parting, then slipped his tongue into the intoxicating seduction of her wine-sweet mouth. The scents and flavours of champagne, freshness, flowers and sweet, primitive woman rose and mingled in his senses, binding him in eternal, erotic enslavement. Stroking her mouth into arousal with his tongue was his own delicious torture.
He heard her make a small involuntary sound in the back of her throat, so evocative of passion the thrill of victory roared through him.
He deepened his demand on her mouth. And she responded, clinging to him and kissing him back with all the fire and fervour a man could dream of igniting in a woman.
All at once she leaned into him like a collapse, her soft curves so yielding and pliant it was another total seduction. He was swept with a purely masculine triumph as he recognised the slight loss of traction in her ability to stand upright. The more boneless and giving she felt in his arms, the harder and more focused was his lust to possess her.
With the strongest effort of will he fought to hold back his erection, but could anything be more irresistible than a desirable woman on the verge of surrender? Like a molten torrent the hot blood surged to harden him unbearably.
The wild notion stormed his fevered brain that he could take her, right there and then, up against the wall of the Park Hyatt.
But he wasn’t altogether lost to reality. His desire filled him to bursting point but he restrained his yearning to grind his aching rod into the cleft between her thighs, though he was fast approaching the moment of barely being able to draw a line in his mind between imagining the rapturous pleasure and experiencing it.
He kept his lustful hands from plundering her ripe breasts, though his palms ached for their lushness.
He was a civilised man, and, though no one else was close by, they were in a public place. She must have become alive to that fact at the same time, because she suddenly stiffened in his arms, broke the kiss and shoved at his chest.
Regretfully he fell back, the feel of her warm, fragrant body lingering in his arms, in thrall to her fresh sweetness to the depths of his being.
She gazed at him, her eyes dark and stormy with that voluptuous, erotic knowledge women’s eyes possessed when they’d just been thoroughly kissed. He could see her panting, her breasts heaving alluringly beneath the confining dress.
‘Shall we go somewhere for coffee?’ he managed to say, smooth as ever under pressure.
She stared at him for a second as comprehension clicked his meaning into place, then blue fire flashed from her eyes. ‘We shall do no such thing. You listen to me, Sebastian Nikosto. That—that was a mistake. You shouldn’t have done that.’
Her sultry mouth was even more swollen. It was so damnably seductive, it took his brain a moment to register her displeasure.
‘You had no right,’ she gasped. ‘Just because my uncle offered me to you, doesn’t mean I have. I’m not freely available to you. I’m not a—a—a goat or a donkey you can just–just use for your pleasure.’
‘What?’ He felt so rocked by the accusation his own voice sounded like a growl from the pit. ‘That’s not what I… Look, I know that, Ariadne. I wouldn’t try to…I’m not the sort of guy who—who…’ Anger, pride and masculine honour sprang bristling to his defence, but he damped down the bitter, blistering words that could have risen to his tongue.
With as much dignity as possible for a man in the grip of a hard-on, he said, his voice crackling with the effort, ‘In case you didn’t recognise it, what you just experienced was a kiss. A genuine kiss. The sort of kiss a man gives a woman he feels some sort of—Admires, for God’s sake. And I’m pretty well certain you were appreciating it as much as I was. Sorry if you feel guilty about it.’
He waited to hear what she would say, but she’d turned her back on him and was smoothing herself down and tidying her hair, brushing down her dress with her hands as if she’d just been in the jaws of a wild foaming beast and needed to remove all traces of him.
He gave her an extra moment to lessen the charges, but nothing came of it. Sebastian Nikosto wouldn’t wait for ever, however desirable the woman.
‘Goodnight, then.’ He clipped his punishingly polite words to give them maximum bite. ‘Sleep well.’
He turned rigidly and walked back into the restaurant, a boiling chaos thundering through his veins of outrage, astonishment, guilt and bloody, bloody desire.
She swept up beside him in a flowery cloud of that perfume that would haunt him for the rest of his life, stalked to the table they’d shared, and snatched up her purse and wrap.
‘And please don’t insult me any further by attempting to pay for my dinner, Mr Nikosto.’ Her sweet, low voice throbbed with emotion. ‘I’ll pay for my own. And it’s not goodnight, it’s goodbye.’
Sebastian drove to the Celestrial office, took the lift up to his floor and strode to his desk. Without a second’s pause he typed the email he knew he should have sent a week since.
To: Pericles Giorgias
Dear Mr Giorgias,
At Celestrial we conduct our business contracts with honour and transparency. As CEO of this company, I reject utterly all hidden clauses, including ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ that cannot stand up legally or morally to the light of public scrutiny.
Celestrial withdraws from all negotiations with Giorgias Shipping.
Consider our association at an end.
Sebastian Nikosto.
His
cursor hovered over the send button while frustration and desperation boiled in his soul. Hell, but of course he couldn’t send it. He slumped in his chair.
Now what? Work all night to eliminate the taste of her?
He got up and paced the office, striving to focus his mind on the challenges ahead of him the next day, anything to wipe out of his head the woman and her outrageous reaction to a simple kiss.
But it wasn’t just the kiss, was it? his uncomfortable conscience nagged. It was the situation. It was his idiocy in suggesting coffee. Why had he done it? He cringed to think of how inept he’d been.
God, had he been so long without a woman he could no longer recognise one who’d been brought up in the traditions?
He cursed himself for a fool, blundering into that kiss with such blind abandon. How could he not have read the signs? He couldn’t believe his error of judgement. She’d looked shocked, and revealed an utterly devastating lack of experience.
Where had she been for the last sixteen years? Had Peri Giorgias wrapped his niece in cotton wool and kept her in a tower?
He hadn’t asked for her, but, whether he liked it or not, however furious and enraged and maddened he felt by the situation, she was here now, dammit. Proud, touchy and—
Soft. Fragrant. Yielding to any enchanted fool who took her in his arms.
Vulnerable, for God’s sake.
Against his will, he’d been moved by her. And however unpredictable and explosive a package she was, he felt responsible for her. Not that she’d ever allow him to set foot near her again.
He winced with the acknowledgement that some of the accusations she’d hurled at him could have had some basis of truth. Would he have succumbed to temptation so rapidly if he hadn’t at some stage thought of her as his for the taking?
He threw himself in his chair and flicked through his program files, stared for minutes unseeing at the screen, then gave up. A hundred laps of the pool were what he needed, followed by a long cold shower.
The situation looked irretrievable. Even if he wanted to risk taking the marriage option he’d wrecked his chances now. And admit it. He wanted to see her again. Wanted to talk to her, watch her eyes light up when she laughed, listen to her surprisingly husky voice.
Feel her softness. He closed his eyes while his senses swam in recollection.
If he could just think of some way to make things right with her.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS too hot in Sydney, even in an air-conditioned hotel suite of the finer quality. And there was no use blaming the champagne. A woman suffering sleep deprivation and jet lag should have expected to be able to sleep, not to toss and turn on her pillow or lapse into fitful dreams about Sebastian Nikosto. Disturbing dreams. Sensual and erotic dreams.
Although, if she was still wide awake could they honestly be called dreams? Fantasies, more like. Fantasies where he kissed her and touched her in the places she’d been so wildly conscious of during that kiss.
But as for that crack he’d made at the end about her feeling guilty…
Guilty? Her? Was she the one who’d instigated the kiss? Certainly she’d been polite, and co-operated in the spirit of the moment, but that was because she’d been well brought up, she had good manners and he’d taken her by surprise.
Every time she thought of the moment his lips had touched hers her insides swirled helplessly with a warm, languorous pleasure. The experience had felt nothing like kissing Demetri. She’d thought she’d been in heaven kissing Demetri, but now she realised she might as well have been pressing her mouth to the mirror.
She smoothed her fingers experimentally over her lips. She’d read about that fiery sensation in romance novels, of course, but never imagined it actually existed. She’d known sexy kisses, sure, but she’d never experienced those little tongues of flame dancing along her lips. Privately, she couldn’t deny it had been pretty overwhelming.
She wondered if Sebastian had felt the same sensation. Perhaps he had, because what else had he meant about going somewhere for coffee if not to bed with her? He’d wanted to make love, just like that, and for a wild moment, for just a brief, fleeting, minuscule fraction of an instant, she was tempted.
But he didn’t know that, did he? Or did he? How could he have known? She realised then that she’d known pretty definitely that he’d wanted her, so he probably did know.
Oh, it was all so humiliating. How could she allow herself to feel the slightest bit of attraction to a man someone else had chosen for her? A man who stood to make a profit?
His stunned face when she was accusing him of taking advantage of her rose up in her mind and she grew hotly impatient with herself. For goodness’ sake, if only she could stop dwelling on it. What did it matter? She’d never see him again, anyway, and that was how she wanted it.
She kicked off the covers and turned on her side, willing herself to fall asleep. She’d just closed her eyes when a weird vibrating buzz by the side of the bed alerted her to the fact that the hotel phone was ringing on its night setting.
Thea Leni? A reprieve?
She scrabbled for the phone, knocking nearly everything off the nightstand in the process. ‘Yes?’
There was a very small pause, then the deep masculine voice sank through her. ‘It’s Sebastian. Don’t…’
Her entire being sprang to vibrant, pulse-drumming attention.
‘…hang up, Ariadne,’ he was saying. ‘Listen, please. I just want to—say something.’
She shouldn’t listen. She should hang up and avoid talking to him ever again. But she held her breath and the phone with a faintly moistening grip.
‘What—what is there to say?’
He sighed. ‘Oh, Ariadne.’ That sigh rustled through her and disarmed her utterly, so evocative it was of rueful, manly remorse and bewilderment. ‘What isn’t there to say? I haven’t woken you, have I?’
‘No, no, I—I’m in bed.’
There was a sudden dramatic silence, then another sigh. This one had a totally different quality.
‘Are you? In bed?’ Even without seeing him she could feel his slow sexy smile break out. ‘Me too. I haven’t been able to sleep for thinking of…tonight and…what happened.’ His voice had deepened, and become darker and more velvet if possible, as if by proxy stroking her all over in lieu of his lean, bronzed hands. ‘I just needed to tell you that—I’m sincerely sorry I upset you. All—all the times I’ve upset you.’
‘Oh.’ She struggled with whether or not she should forgive him. Would it be weak of her? Wasn’t he just trying to talk her round? But she wanted to. She brightened at the thought that without anyone else in Sydney, possibly the country, she didn’t have a choice.
Not to make it too easy for him though, she said sternly, ‘Well, you know, you can’t just go around kissing people.’
‘I know.’
He sounded so contrite, she felt soothed enough to go on. ‘Trapping people into having dinner with you, then talking them into walking in the dark with you, and…’
‘I know, I know. It probably looked like that. Can you just consider for a minute that I might—that I just—sincerely wanted to get to know you?’
She was silent. ‘Well, there’s no way you can get to know someone from one dinner. Not enough to—kiss them. We were strangers. We’re still strangers.’
‘Not altogether. Not now. Now that we’ve…’
‘Kissed?’ The word came out so huskily she had to clear her throat.
This time she could feel his smile radiating down the airwaves like a warm Saharan breeze. ‘Well, I was going to say broken bread together, but, now that you mention it, a kiss does rather focus your attention on a person, doesn’t it? I think it can tell you a lot.’
A hot flush washed through her, possibly making her glow in the dark. What could he tell about her? She hoped he didn’t guess she’d been lying here, unable to think of anything else except that kiss. Whether she’d performed her part well enough. How much better it might
have been if she had more practice. How she might achieve such practice.
‘Maybe,’ she conceded. ‘All right, then.’
‘And—look, I have to say I don’t think of you as being a donkey, or a goat.’
Suspecting that he might secretly be laughing at the passionate things she’d said, she retorted quickly, ‘You knew what I meant!’
‘I did, yes. I think I can understand. I wanted to tell you that I feel the deepest respect for you.’ He exhaled a long breath. ‘Oh. This is a damnable way to meet someone, isn’t it?’
Her ears rang in disbelief. She was silent, straining to wrench the inferences from the words. Did he mean…meet someone? As in…?
After a while she ventured, ‘What—do you mean?’
Now he was hesitating. ‘I think you are aware that I find you very attractive.’
Her heart thundered into a drum roll. Now was the time to hang up on him. Stop him from saying another seductive, undermining word. But she held on, drinking in every gap, every pause and nuance of what came next like a swan under the spell of a sorcerer.
‘Desire is an amazing thing, isn’t it?’ he went on, his voice grave now. Warm and serious and sincere.
She lay in the darkness, her heart thundering, breathing so fast, with no defences against the beautiful deep masculine voice vibrating through her body, playing on her emotions, saying the things she’d always dreamed a gorgeous man would say to her.
‘…So stunning, and exciting, the way it hits you like a train. Even when you might expect to feel the very opposite, you see someone across a room and at once your body knows, even before your mind does. Do you know what I mean?’
She was knocked sideways, her heart a racing turmoil, her brain in shocked, incoherent confusion. ‘Oh, well, yes, I know I guess, Sebastian, but…but I mean… I can’t say… Anyway, look. I have to…I have to get up early in the morning. So…’
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