by Lucy Ellis
Couples were dancing to an old Cole Porter tune outside, and Nash suddenly pushed back his chair, interrupting the woman’s flow. He got up, offered Lorelei his hand.
‘What a brilliant idea,’ said another of the women.
Lorelei followed him out, and the moment she was in his arms he caught one of her hands and turned it palm-side up. She didn’t want to struggle to free herself so she let him.
He rubbed his thumb over the calluses.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about these?’
He didn’t sound accusing, just genuinely surprised.
‘You never asked.’
‘You’re right. I haven’t asked. But I’m asking now.’
She tugged her hand away. He let her.
‘They bother you? The calluses?’
‘They’re not very feminine,’ she said tightly.
‘I disagree.’ He put his hands around her waist, drew her close. ‘You’ve got capable hands.’
Lorelei leaned in against him. ‘They used to be my gift,’ she said unthinkingly, seduced by the sudden proximity of his size and strength.
‘Your gift?’ he prompted
‘I evented. Rode horses in dressage and show trials. I was quite good.’
‘How good?’
‘Good enough.’ She felt slightly awkward. ‘International standard.’
Nash stopped swaying her in his arms. He was looking down at her as if she’d said she once had two heads.
‘I’ve surprised you,’ she said, a little more crisply.
‘You’ve impressed me,’ he said slowly. ‘But you said you rode, in the past tense. Why did you give it up?’
‘I had an accident. It’s made any sustained time in the saddle difficult.’ She hated this part. It was the reason she never talked about it. People either felt sorry for her or dismissed it as a minor disappointment. Both rankled. Almost in sympathy she felt the echo of phantom pains in her hip flexors.
‘How did it happen?’
His voice was low, and it was easy to forget they were on a dance floor. It was as if they were in their own private little world.
‘I was twenty-two. I came down over a jump, and so did the horse. He landed on me.’
Nash stilled.
‘I survived—obviously. It took several surgeries and a lot of physio, but I’m able to ride recreationally again.’
‘How long were you in recovery?’
‘Two years.’
She saw him absorb that information.
‘Those marks on your hips?’ he said a little roughly.
Her eyes darted to his. He’d noticed. They were so faint. Did he find them unattractive?
‘We all have scars, don’t we?’ she said slowly. ‘It’s a part of life.’
Nash surprised her by sliding his hands subtly onto her hips. ‘You hide yours very well,’ he said.
‘What about you?’ she challenged. ‘Where are your scars?’
He looked her in the eye. ‘I wear them for the world to see,’ he answered. ‘Every time I race.’
Race, present tense.
She wanted to ask him about it but Nash bent down and said in her ear, ‘And your old man? Is he really a gigolo?’
Lorelei pulled her arms free and went to walk away, but Nash had her tightly around the waist.
‘Touchy, aren’t we?’
She flashed active dislike at him and said tightly, ‘He’s the best on the Riviera.’
‘There you go,’ he said lightly. ‘Not so hard talking about it, was it?’
‘Have you finished?’
‘I’m just wondering,’ he said, continuing to sway her lightly, ‘how many other secrets you’re hiding.’
Lorelei looked away. ‘Nothing that could possibly interest you.’
‘On the contrary, Lorelei, I have a feeling it’s all going to interest me. Come on—we’ll get your wrap.’
‘I don’t understand. Where are we going?’
‘Where do you think?’
CHAPTER TWELVE
FROGMARCHING her across the sand in heels only got him so far. Lorelei ground to a halt and swiped off her shoes, then threw them at him. He’d seen her aim before. He had the sense to sidestep and duck.
‘You worked the crowd well tonight,’ he called after her.
‘I wasn’t working,’ she responded. ‘I was just being myself—not that you would know anything about that.’
Nash caught up with her.
‘Hard work, is it? Prising open those wallets?’
She stopped dead. ‘Why are you making it sound underhand, as if I have other motives?’
‘I’m sure when you were on Andrei Yurovsky’s yacht last summer you had the best interests of the charity at heart,’ he responded. ‘And when you were in New York with Damiano Massena earlier this year it was purely a charitable impulse.’
Lorelei blinked rapidly. ‘You’re jealous,’ she said as if this were a wonder.
‘No, sweetheart, not jealous. Territorial. There’s a difference.’
‘I’m not a country, Nash,’ she said coolly, but he could tell he’d rattled her. ‘You can’t invade me and stick up your flag.’
‘I can do whatever I damn well please.’
He had hold of her wrist. He wasn’t sure how that had happened. He just wanted answers. Despite everything he’d convinced himself about not wanting to dig any deeper, all of those possessive feelings had roared into life as she’d so casually admitted to a professional equestrian career.
She hid everything—and he’d thought he was the expert at keeping his private feelings under wraps. Lorelei could give him lessons.
‘You’re implying I sleep with men for money,’ she said icily. ‘I really don’t think we’ll be going any further, do you? Now, take your hands off me. I’m going home to bed.’
Nash shook his head.
‘Are you going to release me?’
Her voice was very calm but he could see the betraying uncertainty in her expression. He was taken back to the first time he had seen her eyes—a little mountain deer quivering at his approach.
‘Explain to me that party you had the other night.’
Lorelei frowned, shaking her head. ‘Why do you care? What do you want from me, Nash? What is this about?’
‘I want to understand you.’ The words were almost prised from him. He couldn’t understand where this seething frustration had come from but he needed answers.
The urge to rip her dress off her and have this out skin to skin in the sand, coupled with the need to protect her from herself, had him in a vortex of desire and self-loathing.
‘Work!’ she almost shouted at him. ‘Just like you. Work!’
Her shoulders rose and fell.
‘The CEO of the charity often asks me to host things,’ she said jerkily. ‘His wife finds it too oppressive. I was brought up to do these things.’ She added the last almost wearily, ‘By my grandmaman.’
‘Who’s dead?’
‘Yes, she’s dead!’ Lorelei’s voice lifted almost on a wail. ‘She’s been dead two years, three months, five days!’
Nash stilled. There were tears behind Lorelei’s eyes. She suddenly looked much younger and a little lost. Two years…It had to be around the time of her father’s arrest. And she was still grieving.
She’d lost both her father and her grandmother.
‘Is that why you still do it even though you can’t afford it? Is that where the debts have sprung from?’ He kept his voice low, not wanting to trigger those tears. He didn’t know what he’d do if she began to cry.
Lorelei lowered her head. He could almost literally see her heart hammering. Her bare chest was so delicate—almost like a baby bird’s. Guilt took a bite out of him. But he had to know if he was going to help her.
‘Does this CEO bloke know about your problems with money?’
‘I don’t have a problem with money. I have a problem with paying my bills,’ she said, lifting her chin a little aggressively. B
aby bird or not, she was spitting like a cat. ‘And, non, I don’t care to share my private business with the world and his wife. Or you.’
She spun around and ran. He loped after her, hitting the automatic door release on the car.
The ten-minute drive back to the bungalow was tense, but it gave Nash time to think over all she’d said. His little eventer who couldn’t manage her chequebook.
As they entered the dark house he asked, ‘How long did you think you could hide it?’
‘I wasn’t hiding anything,’ she rapped out, staccato-fashion. ‘I was dealing with it. In my own way.’
‘And how’s that been working for you?’
‘Well, pardon me,’ she said, reeling around, ‘but we’re all not big, capable genius designers who can fix everything with the snap of our fingers!’
Nash stared down at her. ‘What did you call me?’
‘You heard—and I think your ego’s big enough for me not to repeat it.’
He wanted to kiss her. Frame her lovely frustrated face and kiss her until she was his again.
‘Do you want me to fix this for you?’
She frowned.
‘Do you?’ he repeated.
‘You really don’t know me at all, do you? You haven’t even bothered to scratch the surface.’
Nash made a low sound of frustration. Didn’t she understand he was going out on a limb for her here? He never pried too deeply into his lovers’ lives. To do so invited intimacy, and he didn’t do that. He did sex.
‘How is it, Nash, that I know so much about you and you seem to know so little about me?’
‘Sweetheart, only you know what you’ve read in the media—and most of that’s crap.’
She narrowed her eyes at him like a cat, spun around and headed for the bedroom—then seemed to change her mind and bowled right back to him. ‘Here’s what I know. You’re amazing. You’re hardworking and driven and you have this shell that you need because you’re in the public eye. But when you’re with your friends you’re different. You don’t push your opinions or need other people to agree with you. You’re just certain in a way I’ll never be. I admire all those things about you.’
She was breathing hard, her eyes bright with repressed feeling. Nash tried not to engage but there she was, in his face.
‘But all you admire about me is my world-class ass—and don’t even think about smiling, because as far as I’m concerned you can kiss it, Mr Racing Car Driver. I’m not waiting around for you to wake up to yourself.’
She really should have stopped after amazing, thought Nash as he stepped up to her, meshed his hand through her hair and brought his mouth down possessively on hers.
As if he’d lit a match next to an open petrol tank Lorelei ignited, surging against him, aggressive as he’d never felt her before. Even the first time she’d kissed him, when she’d taken the initiative, there had been a feminine reticence in her as if she needed to keep her protective barriers in place.
There were no barriers up now. The feel of her mouth moving desperately against his own made him crazy. Kissing her, hauling her with him, he staggered to the nearest flat surface—which happened to be one of the guest bedrooms. Nash would have laughed if he could at how eager he was—like a damn teenager, reefing down his trousers, with Lorelei making desperate noises as she cleaved to him, making it more difficult to actually shed any layers of clothing.
He slid his hands up her thighs, pooling her long silken skirt, and remembered as his hand touched bare skin that she’d gone commando.
Thank God.
She whimpered and drew him to her, clamping her thighs around his lean hips. Her eyes were wide and what he saw there wasn’t simply desire, it was anxiety.
‘Lorelei?’ He was so close to the edge, and yet she was looking at him as if she wasn’t quite sure what was going on.
‘Nash, I’m scared.’ The words were almost wrenched from her. Her fingers were digging into his shoulders as if she was dangling off a cliff face, her bright troubled eyes fixed on his.
‘Don’t be.’ He suddenly didn’t feel all that secure himself, and that was a new experience. The words he found for her came from a deeper place inside him. ‘I’ve got you.’
As if that were enough for her she lifted her mouth to his, shaking, a little wild, and her body came alive beneath his own in a way it never had before, coaxing him to take her. He only just remembered the condom. Deep inside her, he held on to his control by receding increments as she seemed unable or unwilling to let go. He felt her resistance not as a challenge but as a desperate uncertainty on her part. Her words came back at him. You’re just certain in a way I’ll never be.
He pressed his forehead to hers. ‘Look at you,’ he said, grazing her cheek, her mouth, her throat with his lips, moving slowly now. ‘So strong, so wild. Do you remember when you threw that shoe at the traffic inspector?’
Lorelei gave a little start under him.
He brushed against her clitoris and she bucked. He did it again.
‘Both shoes. I knew it then.’
‘What—what did you know?’
‘I’d never keep up.’ He shifted his hips.
She made a sound—part murmur of approval, part moan.
‘You stuck your finger in his face and read him the Riot Act.’ He cupped her bottom. ‘I thought you were going to get us arrested.’
She quaked against him. ‘Sorry… I’m sorry.’
‘No, no, don’t be sorry,’ he urged, moving harder inside her. ‘Never be sorry. Do you remember when I took you back to the villa?’ He angled his thrusts to reach higher. ‘This—is what—I wanted—to do. Right there. In the Veyron.’
‘Why?’ she cried. ‘Why didn’t you?’
But she was already there.
‘Stick shift,’ he groaned as Lorelei’s inner muscles clamped around him. He was grabbed and thrown down again and again, until his body convulsed uncontrollably against her and she clutched at him, riding out her own pleasure. It seemed as much his as hers, making sounds he only half recognised.
As he subsided heavily on top of her the chemical high kicked in and for several minutes he just held her, his chest pumping. He was conscious only of her trembling, responsive body cleaved to his—until he became aware something else was at play here. This wasn’t just the euphoria of great sex. He could feel the connection with her still and didn’t want to break it. He really didn’t want to move, but he knew there was a risk if he didn’t pull out of her, dispose of the condom.
It was as he began to sit up that he became aware she was making soft, helpless sounds. Insidious recognition reached down into his gut and grabbed hold of something he hadn’t had to acknowledge in years.
The voice of his old man, telling him it was his fault, always his fault. To be a man and not a snivelling four-year-old boy.
He needed to hold her. That part of him that told him it was weakness that was at war with the man in him, who curved his hands around her slight, quaking shoulders, gathered her up in his arms and held her.
She turned her face into his shoulder and he experienced a surge of tenderness that threatened to further undo him. He was not accustomed to being gentle, but somehow he was, stroking the curls tumbling down the back of her neck, using his broad thumb to trace the curve of her ear, kissing her there because he needed to.
Except the face she lifted to his was not tear-streaked. Her amber eyes glowed; her cheeks were hot and flushed. She had never looked quite so beautiful, and she was smiling at him, softly laughing, her face haloed by all those silky fair curls.
‘Stick shift.’ She giggled as if she’d never heard anything funnier.
As he’d lost control he’d been listening not to Lorelei’s tears but to her helpless, happy laughter as she came and came, and like a bolt of lightning it hit him hard. With this woman, only with Lorelei, he felt like a conquering king.
*
Lorelei leaned across and gave Nash a lick of her ice cream.
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She was sitting on the high sea wall and he was leaning against it between her legs, his back to her, his head just above her knees.
Beyond, fishermen were casting nets in the sea and local children ran splashing in the shoals, their happy voices punctuating the shriek of gulls, the occasional backfiring of a scooter, which seemed to be a popular method of transport, and the general hum of tourists and locals as the summer season ran out its course.
They had been exploring the tiny fishing village of Trou d’Eau Douce here on the east coast all morning, and lunch lay ahead, but Lorelei would have been perfectly content to stay exactly where they were. In the moment.
‘This tourist route must be boring for you,’ she said cheerfully, not sounding at all sorry.
‘Yeah, I’m bored out of my mind,’ Nash responded, giving her the benefit of a relaxed grin.
Lorelei didn’t think she’d ever seen him this relaxed. They were supposed to be on a yacht with his friends, but this morning Nash had cancelled.
‘Don’t you have meetings? You haven’t been going to them. Isn’t that the point of why we’re here?’ She had felt obliged to ask those questions, but her heart had been beating like hummingbird wings.
‘The point is spending time with you,’ he’d responded as if it were natural, and Lorelei had suddenly felt the world opening up around her into a thousand possibilities, all of them leading back to Nash.
He had forced secrets from her the other night, pushed past her fears and something important had cracked open in her, and instead of darkness only light had poured out.
He had made love to her all through the night until her body had felt like a map of Nash’s voyages, each one leaving her feeling weightless and oddly free.
It was as if being here with him these last few days had unlocked those shackles of family and the past she’d been dragging around for so long. The thought of going back to how she had been seemed impossible now.
