by Margaret Way
“So?” She tilted her chin, looking at him disdainfully. “Twenty-five is good to be a virgin. I’ll give myself only to the man I love.”
He released a stifled breath. “Sonya, in my own defence I have to point out you’ve behaved like a very passionate young woman with me. Marcus wanted you to be his wife. Did you tell him you were a virgin?”
“None of his business,” she said. “My business. I don’t care if I never have sex.”
He raised his hands in a gesture that said, Enough! “You’d better start learning to handle the truth. We’ve come pretty close to crossing the line.”
“All right, I admit it!” Tears filled her eyes. “I wasn’t looking for any of this. It just happened. I wish I could say I was a normal person, like your girlfriends. Paula Rowlands, however, is an exception. I am not normal. Because I have not had a normal life. I’ve lived with too much fear. I’ve lived with being greatly desired. For sex! There, now you know! Not me, who I am. My face, my body. Like my mother in her first disastrous marriage. But I was to be allowed time. I was the chosen one, always watched. I was a prize, you see. I was treated well in some ways. I wasn’t beaten or starved or locked up. These were civilised people of good family. The intimidation was subtle but very real. I knew I had to escape after one frightening encounter. So I did.”
He felt so greatly perturbed, he moved to cradle her in his arms. “These people, these relatives, have much to answer for. Did they by any chance know about the Madonna?”
She shook her head. “Of course not! They all believed it was lost along with so many other treasures. I was the treasure. The sixteen-year-old. So pretty! A pretty woman is always desirable, is she not?”
“Pretty doesn’t say it,” he said. “You had the money to run?”
“I did. Not a great amount, but enough to eventually get out of Europe. My father died without making a will, you see. He didn’t know he was destined to die early. The money, of course, would have come to me in time, when I was eighteen, but meanwhile I had a guardian. It was the guardian who wanted me. He too was all of thirty years older.”
“And he didn’t come after you?” His voice hardened at the thought. Sixteen, robbed of her parents, and under tremendous fear of sexual abuse.
“I told you. I’m good at disappearing. I had protection. I had my father’s gun.”
He was surprised by how much that shocked him. “There are strict gun laws in the country, Sonya. Do you still have it?”
“Of course not!” she answered scornfully. “I threw it in a river as soon as I felt safe. I couldn’t get into this country with a gun in my luggage. Guns are terrible things.”
“I’m so glad you agree. Sonya, could you do something for me?” He looked down at her.
“I need to know what it is.” She felt she ought to cry, she loved him so much.
“A sensible suggestion. I’ll go back to my parents’ home. You, I want safe in my apartment. It’s a very secure building. This is not. Two girls in the lobby were only too pleased to let me through tonight. I could have been anyone.”
“But you’re not just anyone.” She shrugged. “You’re David Wainwright. I know the security on the building isn’t tight. You Australians are so unsuspecting. I never let anyone through who appears to be waiting an opportunity.”
“Very wise. And we Australians are not as unsuspecting as you think, though I concede we have been for a very long time. Do you want to pack a few things? I want you to bring the Madonna. I have a safe in the apartment. I think the icon should be transferred to a bank. Alternatively there’s a strong room in my father’s house. It could go there.”
“It must stay with me,” she maintained, her expression weighed down with a mix of powerful emotions.
“No one will take it from you, Sonya. But they very well could if you insist on keeping it here. Give it some thought now. If you truly believe Laszlo has never ceased searching for you, you’ve put yourself into the frame through association with Marcus. That makes us in our way responsible.”
“You will go to your parents’ house?” she questioned him, her green eyes searching his face.
“That’s a promise. You have nothing to fear from me. I would never harm you.”
“Maybe you harm me already,” she confessed. “I’ll go with you, David. Give me a few minutes to pack a bag.”
He saw them the instant they came through the security door. His target and the tall, strikingly handsome young man who had been at the funeral and had walked her to her car. He knew who he was. David Wainwright. A member of a mega-rich, highly influential family. He looked superbly fit. He moved like a top athlete. Nevertheless he thought, if he had to, he could take him. He himself was as fit as any man could be, although he gave this Wainwright fellow a good ten and more years. Confrontation was clearly to be avoided. They were getting into a small nondescript car. Thousands of them on the road. He would follow them to their destination. They weren’t going out for the evening. Wainwright was still wearing his dark suit but she was dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt. Even then she looked a countess.
CHAPTER NINE
DAVID had the entire top floor to himself. Sonya was coming to an understanding of what it meant to have a great deal of money. His harbourside apartment, a short distance from Lady Palmerston’s, was sophisticated, clean lined, contemporary taste, stunning aboriginal art works glowing from the walls.
In the living room she saw several large sofas. The longest would comfortably seat six. It was positioned against the majestic backdrop of Sydney Harbour in its night-time dazzle. A half a dozen comfortable armchairs were covered in willow green; two bucket chairs upholstered in a complementary soft mustard suede.
The living room was divided from the dining room by a series of substantial wooden columns. The dining setting, with a rectangular mahogany table, meticulously crafted, was for ten. Adjacent another smaller setting for six, this time around a circular table. She could see he loved fine timbers as much as she did. The splendid mahogany flooring was bordered by a polished limestone inlay. It was all very impressive. A far cry from her apartment.
“You’ll be safe here.” David’s eyes followed her slender, willowy figure as she wandered about.
“I love where you live, David. I love your style.” She spoke calmly enough, but inside she was shaking. They were alone together inside his apartment. One part of her longed for him to sweep her up and make love to her. The other commanded her to hold herself together.
“That will do for a start,” he said, his tone sardonic. “There are four bedrooms apart from the master suite. Come and see where you think you’ll be most comfortable. All the guest rooms are made up, bed linens changed once a week whether I have guests or not. All of them have en suites. Sonya, come along.” He knew he sounded in full possession of himself, but hunger for her was nearly bringing him to his knees.
“Where are we going to put the Madonna?” she asked.
“First things first, I see. I have a safe in my dressing room.”
“May we put it away right now?” Her emerald eyes were fixed on him with great intensity.
“Of course. Follow me. I recommend you pick out your bedroom first. You get the icon out your bag. I’ll go open the safe.”
“You don’t want me to know the combination?”
“If I give it to you, you have to guard it with your life,” he returned.
The shorter the time they were inside the confines of his dressing room, off the bedroom, the better. One false move and she would be right into his arms. That couldn’t happen. He had given his promise.
Sonya was so on edge she picked the first guest room they came to. He put out a hand to flick the panel that controlled the lighting. Immediately the room glowed with soft golden light. The room had an exceptional view of the harbour. There was a big king-sized bed, with a dark golden bedspread, a long, very interesting mahogany bench at its foot; a big comfortable armchair with a good-sized footstool. A long Ja
panese scroll framed in ebony over the bed; a plush coffee-coloured area rug imprinted with Japanese-style branches and blossoms in a soft chocolate.
“Your guests must count themselves very lucky,” she said. “This will do me fine.”
“Okay.” He made himself walk away from her, fighting down urges that were mounting into a tremendous force.
“David?” she called, after a minute or two.
His name on her lips was a caress. “Are you lost? I’m down here at the end of the hallway.”
He sounded so matter-of-fact she might have been a young cousin. These tumultuous emotions could well be on her side. She had to remember he would have had any amount of experience with women. She had had no sexual experience along the way. She moved slowly, almost pinning herself to the wall. She had to think of Marcus. There was no other way.
His bedroom was huge, again with the magnificent view and a spacious balcony beyond. The neutral colours were given considerable impact by a splendid dark crimson and gold bedspread. Matching cushions sat on the two big armchairs positioned on either side of a coffee table. On it stood a specimen vase, with a single pure white butterfly orchid with three delicate stems. A bronze bust of a beautiful woman was nearby.
“My mother,” he said, following her gaze.
“She’s very beautiful.” Sonya moved closer to inspect it.
“That she is,” he said. “I take after my mother’s family, the Holts.”
She stroked the sculpture with a gentle finger. “I can see you in the set of the eyes, the high cheekbones, even the mouth.”
“I resemble my mother, yes. Come along, Sonya. We’ll get this icon into safekeeping.”
He spoke so crisply she had the dismal feeling she was holding him up and he wanted to be away from her. The dressing room was adjacent, beyond that the bathroom, all in keeping with the subdued opulence of the rest of the apartment.
She bent her head to kiss the case reverently, speaking a few words in Hungarian. It had been a source of family pride for her grandmother to teach her mother the language of her birth and for her mother in turn to pass that language on to her. Through her father she had learned to speak fluent French and German, just as her mother did. It had been nothing in her family to speak several languages. It had been encouraged. She passed the icon to David, watching him in silence as he put it into the safe, built into the floor of his mahogany wardrobe. The room had the smell of luxury, of leather and beautiful clothes.
“Thank you, David,” she whispered.
“Let’s get out of here.”
There was a dark, intense look on his face. “You wanted to bring me here,” she pointed out, turning about almost at a run. “Now you think you’ve made a mistake?”
“Maybe I have!” He moved after her.
“So the Madonna is safe! That’s all that matters. I don’t have to stay. I’m happy to go back home.”
“Are you?” He swung her back to face him, as wound up as she. There was a fierce quaking locked up inside him that threatened to escape. A telltale shaking was travelling down his strong arms.
“I want to be as much away from you as you want to be away from me,” she said fiercely. “Isn’t that so?”
In her fury she looked incredibly beautiful, eyes blazing like precious gems, hot colour in her cheeks. “How many times do I have to tell you? I want you, Sonya. But I’m trying to do the right thing. Don’t make it impossible for me. I hardly seem to know what I’m doing any more.”
“And you hate it, don’t you?” she accused “You want to fight it, this first time a woman has the better of you?”
“The better of me?” His handsome face tautened. “I’d advise you not to provoke me, Sonya.” He felt panicked by his rush of anger. Only it wasn’t anger at all. It was white-hot desire that was burning out of control.
Her eyes went huge in her emotion-charged face. She knew her behaviour was verging on the irrational, but she couldn’t stop. “Why, would that give you an excuse to rape me?”
Shock and disgust froze his tall, elegant body. “I’m going to have to forget you said that, Sonya,” he said, too quietly. “I’ll go now. But before I do I’ll show you how to lock up after me.”
The words were barely out of her mouth before she realized how disgraceful they were. Some men wished to rape. David, never, never, never! She flew after him. “David, I’m sorry. So sorry. I didn’t mean that. You are right to despise me.”
“Good night, Sonya,” he said curtly, without looking at her.
“Please, David, don’t go in anger. I said I’m sorry.” She had feared all evening she would cry. Now she did, seeking any measure of relief from the tightening knots of pain.
He swung back on her, looking incredibly tense, his eyes as black as night. “Don’t do that. I don’t want you to cry. Wait until I’m out of here.”
“Yes, of course.” Obediently she dashed the tears away with one hand, then perversely went back on the attack. Nothing made sense. “Who are you to give me orders?” she demanded. “I’m allowed to cry if I want to. Now, what is it you wish to show me?” She tilted her chin, wanting to prove her self-control hadn’t gone with the wind.
Her dramatic volte-face got under his guard. Women! he thought in high frustration. “Come here.” He motioned her towards a large panel of switches.
“I think I know how to handle a few switches,” she told him with that infuriatingly blasé aristocratic air.
“You don’t know.” He gritted his teeth, feeling like a man lurching towards disaster. “Just listen and watch.”
She didn’t dare move a step closer. A step closer to this man she loved with all her heart. She had known little certainty in her life, but she knew this. “I fall in love with you,” she burst out, flooded with all sorts of conflicting emotions. “It is all wrong, a catastrophe. I know you think that.”
He felt like hitting something in his immense frustration. He knotted his fist, then hit the wall. “Sonya—”
“Every time I see you I fall deeper in love,” she confessed, a writhing mass of nerves. The floodgates had well and truly opened. “A tragedy. I didn’t want it. I don’t even understand how it has happened.”
“Sonya,” he said very tightly indeed. “I must go.”
“Go, then. Go, go go!” She was utterly beside herself, almost dancing on the spot. “I put up with you as long as I can!”
She was sounding more and more foreign, her excellent English failing her.
He couldn’t afford to continue this argument. Didn’t she know she was inciting him beyond control? “This one,” he gritted, stabbing his finger to a switch. “Then this one.” He pointed to a switch in the next line. The slightest spark would set him off.
“So you’re going to abandon me?” she cried.
Was she a woman gone crazy sending out all these mixed messages? He stared down into her overwrought face “Abandon you? Excuse me, you wanted me out!”
Do something, for God’s sake. Do something for both of you. The voice inside his head shouted the warning.
“Don’t go, David.” Now she turned to pleading. “I hurt you. I am sorry.”
“Sonya, if I stay—” He broke off, dragging breath into his lungs like a marathon runner.
“Stay,” she whispered. “You want me. I want you. I want to lose my virginity to you. I promise you I won’t regret it.”
The drumming in his ears was so loud he had to put up his hands to cover them. The voice inside his head was no match for this heavy pounding. “Sonya,” he groaned, under unbearable pressure.
“It’s all right.” She went to him, lifting her white slender arms to link them around his neck. “Kiss me, David.”
It was a heartfelt plea. Yet her voice was more alluring than any woman’s had the right to be.
“Hold me. Make love to me.”
Such an invitation was like a galvanic electric charge. What man could deny himself promised rapture? He knew he was in thrall to her. Woman, t
he goddess. Man was right to fear her. Only he didn’t hesitate to obey, not for a nanosecond. He swooped to lift her high in his arms.
For a moment as she opened her eyes Sonya was disorientated. She had no idea where she was. She was lying in a huge, wonderfully comfortable bed, stark naked. Then on a wave of heat it all came flooding back …
David!
She put a hand to a pink nipple. It throbbed. She found herself stroking her own skin with a sensuous hand. She had never felt more like a woman. She was a virgin no longer. She was in a state of euphoria.
David! She whispered his name. David, her perfect lover!
Rolling voluptuously onto her back, she stared up at the high plastered ceiling. The world felt like a different place. It was transformed. David had made love to her, starting so slowly, sweetly, gently, so exquisitely mindful of her, so when at long last, when she could stand no more, they joined together her deliriously excited body was ready for him.
“Forgive me,” he had murmured, drawing back to stare at her, showing his distress.
Forgive? What was there to forgive? He had shown her unimaginable rapture. Afterwards both of them had sunk into a spent sleep, her naked body spooned into his, his strong arm around her. Both had awoken at dawn when they made love again, this time in an escalating desire that became a passionate fury. She had lost her heart totally. He had wrung the soul from her. Now her body was his. Every inch of it he had charted. She had thought sex something she could live without. She knew very differently now.
It was David who had now to take control of the situation. Could they become a couple? Could she ever be accepted? There were so many hurdles to be covered. But whatever happened in the future no one could take her night of nights from her. It had been a sublime experience. David had made it so. She wanted no other man.
He almost missed her coming out of the apartment building. She must have called a cab because she flagged it down as it approached the luxury complex. He had to be getting old. He had fallen asleep after he saw Wainwright drive away some hours before, in a big Mercedes.
