Rumors on the Red Carpet

by Carole Mortimer

  Maybe not the best analogy, but Stazy no more needed Jaxon in her bed now than she had really needed that very expensive microscope nineteen years ago.

  In other words, allowing Jaxon Wilder to kiss her would be an extravagance her emotions just didn’t want or need!

  Stazy liked her life ordered. Structured. Safe!

  Most of all safe...

  She had learnt at a very young age that caring for someone, loving them, needing a special someone in your life, was a guarantee of pain in the future when that person either left or—worse—died. As her parents had died. As Granny had died. As her grandfather, now in his nineties, and with that heart attack only a few months ago behind him, would eventually die.

  Stazy didn’t want to care about anyone else, to need anyone else—couldn’t cope with any more losses in her life.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ Jaxon groaned huskily.

  She raised startled lids. ‘Do what?’

  ‘Lick your lips.’ The darkness of his gaze became riveted on the moistness of those lips as Stazy ran her tongue nervously between them. ‘I’ve been wanting to do exactly the same thing since the moment we first met,’ Jaxon admitted gruffly.

  Her eyes were wide. ‘You have...?’

  He rested his forehead against hers, his breath a warm caress across her already heated cheeks. ‘You have the sexiest mouth I’ve ever seen...’

  She gave a choked laugh. ‘I thought it was universally acknowledged that that was Angelina Jolie?’

  ‘Until six weeks ago I thought so too.’ Jaxon nodded.

  He had fantasised about Stazy’s mouth these past six weeks. Imagined all the things she could do to him with those deliciously full and pouting lips. Grown hard with need just thinking of that plump fullness against his flesh, kissing him, tasting him. As he now longed to taste her...

  ‘I’m going to kiss you now, Stazy,’ Jaxon warned harshly.

  ‘Jaxon, no...!’ she groaned in protest.

  ‘Jaxon, yes!’ he contradicted firmly, before lowering his head and capturing those full and succulent lips with his own, groaning low in his throat as he found she felt and tasted as good as he had imagined she would!

  If Jaxon’s mouth had been demanding or rough against hers then Stazy believed she might have been able to resist him. She hoped she would have been able to resist him! As it was he kissed her with gentle exploration, sipping, tasting, as his mouth moved over and against hers with a slow languor that was torture to the senses. Taste as well as touch.

  Those chiselled lips were surprisingly soft and warm against her own, his body even hotter as Jaxon lowered himself against her with a low groan, instantly making her aware of the hardness of his arousal pressing against her own aching thighs.

  Unbidden, it seemed, her hands glided up his chest and over his shoulders, until her fingers at last became entangled with the overlong thickness of that silky dark hair.

  He pulled back slightly, and Stazy at once felt bereft without the heat of those exploring lips against her own.

  ‘Say so now if you want me to stop...’

  ‘No...’ She was the one to initiate the kiss this time, as she moved up onto her tiptoes, her lips parting to deepen the kiss rather than end it as she held him to her.

  It was all the invitation Jaxon needed. He pressed himself firmly against the warm softness of her body as his hands moved to cup either side of her face so that he could explore that delicious mouth more deeply, tongue dipping between her parted lips to enter and explore the moist and inviting heat beneath.

  Her taste—warmth and the sweetness of honey, and something indefinably feminine—was completely intoxicating. Like pure alcohol shooting through Jaxon’s bloodstream, it threw him off balance, ripping away any awareness of anything other than the taste and feel of Stazy’s mouth against his and her warm and luscious body beneath him.

  He could only feel as Stazy wrapped her arms more tightly about his shoulders and arched her body up and into his, her soft breasts against the hardness of his chest, the heat of her thighs against the hot throb of his arousal. His hands moved down to her waist before sliding around to cup the twin orbs of her bottom to pull her up closer to him.

  Jaxon kissed her hungrily, his arousal a fierce throb as Stazy returned the hunger of that kiss, lips hot and demanding, tongues duelling, bodies clamouring for even closer contact.

  As Stazy had expected—feared—the tight control she usually exerted over her emotions had departed the moment Jaxon began to kiss her. Her nipples had grown hard and achingly sensitised, and the heat from their kisses was moving between her thighs—a feeling she hadn’t experienced even when fully making love with those two men in her past.

  She didn’t want Jaxon ever to stop. Every achingly aroused inch of her cried out for more. One of his hands moved to cup the fullness of her breast, sending hot rivulets of pleasure coursing through her as his thumb grazed across the aching nipple. Stazy pressed into the heat of his hand, wanting more, needing more, and Jaxon lifted her completely off the floor to wrap her legs about his waist.

  She no longer cared that they were in her grandfather’s family dining room, or that Little could walk back into the room at any moment to remove their dinner plates.

  All she was aware of was Jaxon—the heat of his arousal pressing into her softness, the pleasure that curled and grew inside her as he squeezed her nipple between thumb and finger, just enough to increase her pleasure but not enough to cause her pain, the hardness of him sending that same pleasure coursing through her.

  She whimpered in protest as Jaxon broke the kiss, that protest turning to a low and aching moan of pleasure as his mouth moved down the length of her throat, his tongue a hot rasp against her skin as he tasted every hot inch of her from the sensitivity of her earlobe to the exposed hollow where her neck and shoulder met. And all the time his thighs continued that slow and torturous thrust against her.

  Stazy still felt as if she were poised on the very edge of a precipice, but no longer cared if she fell over the edge. She wanted this. Wanted Jaxon. He felt so good, so very, very good, that she never wanted this to end...

  Jaxon pulled back with a groan, his forehead slightly damp as it rested against hers. ‘Lord knows I don’t want us to stop, but Little is sure to come back in a few minutes...’

  Stazy stared up at him blankly for several seconds, and then her face paled, her eyes widening with dismay as she took in the full import of what had just happened. ‘Oh-my-God...!’ Her expression was stricken as she struggled to put her feet back onto the floor, her face averted as she pulled out of Jaxon’s arms to hastily straighten and pull her dress back down over the silkiness of her thighs.

  ‘Stazy—’

  ‘I think it’s best if you don’t touch me again, Jaxon,’ she warned shakily, even as Jaxon would have done exactly that.

  His arms dropped back to his sides as he saw the bewilderment in her eyes. His tone was reasoning. ‘Stazy, what happened just now was perfectly normal—’

  ‘It may be “normal” for you, Jaxon, but it certainly isn’t normal for me!’ she assured tremulously.

  ‘Damn it, I asked you if you wanted me to stop!’

  ‘I know...!’ she groaned. ‘I just— This must never happen again, Jaxon.’ She looked up at him with tear-wet eyes.

  ‘Why not...?’

  ‘It just can’t,’ she bit out determinedly.

  ‘That isn’t a reason—’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s the only one you’re going to get at the moment,’ she confirmed huskily, giving him one last pleading look before turning to hurry across the room to wrench open the door, closing it firmly behind her several seconds later.

  Leaving Jaxon in absolutely no doubt that the passionately hot Stazy—the woman he had held in his arms only minutes ago—would be firmly bu
ried beneath cool and analytical Dr Anastasia Bromley by the time the two of them met again...

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘IF YOU HAD LET me know you were going out riding earlier this morning then I would have come with you, rather than just sat and watched you out of the window as I ate my breakfast...’

  Stazy’s gaze was cool when she glanced across at Jaxon as he entered the library the following morning. ‘To have invited you to accompany me would have defeated the whole object.’ Having to accept one of her grandfather’s security guards accompanying her, and in doing so severely curtailing where she rode, had been bad enough, without having Jaxon trailing along as well!

  After last night he was the last person she had wanted to be with when she’d got up this morning!

  Neither of her two experiences had prepared her in the least for the heat, the total wildness, of being in Jaxon’s arms the previous evening.

  It had been totally out of control. She had been out of control!

  Her two sexual experiences had been far from satisfactory, and yet she had almost gone over the edge just from having her legs wrapped around Jaxon’s waist while he thrust against the silky barrier of her panties!

  Having escaped to her bedroom the previous evening, Stazy had relived every wild and wanton moment of being in Jaxon’s arms. The thrumming excitement. The arousal. And—oh, God!—the pleasure! She had trembled from the force of that pleasure, the sensitive ache still between her thighs, her breasts feeling full and sensitised.

  She had been so aroused that she dreaded to think what might have happened if Jaxon hadn’t called a halt to their lovemaking. Would Jaxon have stripped off her clothes? Worse, would she have ripped off her own clothes? And would he have made love to her on the carpeted floor, perhaps? Or maybe he would have just ripped her panties aside and taken her against the cabinet? Having either of those two things happen would have been not only unacceptable but totally beyond Stazy’s previous experience.

  ‘Am I wrong in sensing the implication that you much preferred to go out riding rather than having to sit and eat breakfast with me...?’ Jaxon prompted dryly.

  She looked across at him. ‘Is that what I implied...?’

  He eyed her frustratedly. Knowing that beneath Stazy’s exterior of cool logic was a woman as passionate as the fiery red-gold of her hair, a woman who had become liquid flame in his arms as she absorbed— consumed!—the blazing demand of his desire before giving it back in equal measure didn’t help to ease that frustration in the slightest.

  ‘Besides which,’ she continued briskly, ‘I was up at six, as usual, and breakfasted not long after.’

  Jaxon closed the door behind him before strolling over to sit on the edge of the table where Stazy sat. ‘I’ll have to remember that you’re an early riser if I ever want the two of us to breakfast together.’

  Stazy could think of only one circumstance under which that might be applicable—and it was a circumstance she had no intention of allowing to happen! That didn’t mean to say she wasn’t completely aware of Jaxon’s muscled thigh only inches away from her where he perched on the edge of the table...

  He looked disgustingly fit and healthy this morning for a man who had flown over from the States only yesterday: the sharp angles of his face were healthily tanned, that overlong dark hair was slightly damp from the shower, his tee shirt—black today—fitted snugly over his muscled chest and the tops of his arms, and faded denims outlined the leanness of his waist and those long legs. There was only a slightly bruised look beneath those intelligent grey eyes to indicate that Jaxon suffered any lingering jet lag.

  ‘I shouldn’t bother for the short amount of time you’ll be here,’ she advised dryly.

  He gave a relaxed smile. ‘Oh, it’s no bother, Stazy,’ he assured her huskily.

  She shifted restlessly. ‘Considering your time here is limited, shouldn’t we get started...?’

  Jaxon didn’t need any reminding that he now had only six days left in which to do his research. Just as he didn’t need to be told that it was Stazy’s intention to keep her distance from him for those same six days...

  There had been a few moments of awkwardness the previous evening, when he’d told Little that Stazy wasn’t feeling well enough to finish her meal and had gone upstairs to her bedroom. The knowing look in the older man’s eyes, before he’d quietly cleared away her place setting had been indicative of his scepticism at that explanation. But, being the polite English butler that he was, Little hadn’t questioned the explanation—or Jaxon’s claim that he didn’t want any more to eat either.

  Food, at least...

  Jaxon’s appetite for finishing what he and Stazy had started had been a different matter entirely!

  Once upstairs, despite feeling exhausted, he had paced the sitting room of his suite for hours as he thought of Stazy’s fiery response to his kisses, his shaft continuing to throb and ache as he remembered having her legs wrapped about his waist, the moist heat between her thighs as he pressed against her.

  A virtually sleepless night later he only had to look at her again this morning to recall the wildness of their shared passion. The fact that her appearance was every inch the prim and cold Dr Anastasia Bromley again today—hair pulled back and plaited down the length of her spine, green blouse loose rather than fitted over tailored black trousers, and flat no-nonsense shoes—in no way dampened the eroticism of last night’s memories.

  In fact the opposite; if anything, that air of cool practicality just made Jaxon want to kiss her until he once again held that responsive woman in his arms!

  ‘Fine.’ He straightened abruptly before taking the seat opposite hers and concentrating on the pile of papers Geoffrey Bromley had left for him to look through.

  That was not to say he wasn’t completely aware of Stazy as she sat opposite him. He could smell her perfume—a light floral and her own warm femininity—and the sunlight streaming through the window was turning her hair to living flame. A flame Jaxon wanted to wrap about his fingers as he once again took those full and pouting lips beneath his own...

  ‘Have you heard from Geoffrey this morning?’ he prompted gruffly after several minutes of torturous silence—minutes during which he was too aware of Stazy to be able to absorb a single thing he had read.

  She shook her head. ‘As I’ve already told you, my grandfather has become a law unto himself since Granny died.’

  Jaxon sat back in his chair. ‘And before that...?’

  Her gaze instantly became guarded. ‘What exactly is it you want to know, Jaxon?’

  He shrugged. ‘All my own research so far gives the impression their long marriage was a happy one.’

  ‘“So far”?’

  Discussing Stazy’s grandparents with her had all the enjoyment of walking over hot coals: one wrong step and he was likely to get seriously burned! ‘You know, we’re going to get along much better if you don’t keep reading criticism into every statement I make.’ He sighed.

  It wasn’t in Stazy’s immediate or long term plans to ‘get along’ with Jaxon. In fact, after her uncharacteristic behaviour last night, she just wanted this whole thing to be over and done with. ‘Sorry,’ she bit out abruptly.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, yes, their marriage was a long and happy one,’ she confirmed evenly. ‘Not joined at the hip,’ she added with a frown. ‘They were both much too independent in nature for that. But emotionally close. Always.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Jaxon nodded, making notes in the pad he had brought downstairs with him.

  Stazy regarded him curiously. ‘You mentioned your own parents when you were here last...are they happily married?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ An affectionate smile curved Jaxon’s lips as he looked up. ‘My brother, too. One big happy family, in fact, and all still living in Cambridgeshire. I’m
the only one in the family to have left the area and avoided the matrimonial noose,’ he added dryly.

  Stazy doubted that he was in any hurry to marry, considering the amount of women reputedly queuing up to share the bed of Jaxon Wilder. Something she had been guilty of herself the previous evening...!

  ‘I don’t suppose your lifestyle is in any way...conducive to a permanent relationship,’ she dismissed coolly.

  Jaxon studied her through narrowed lids. ‘Any more than your own is. An archaeologist who travels around the world on digs every chance she gets...’ he added with a shrug as she looked at him enquiringly.

  She smiled tightly. ‘That’s one of the benefits of being unattached, yes.’

  ‘And what do you consider the other advantages to be?’ he prompted curiously.

  She gave a lightly dismissive laugh. ‘The same as yours, I expect. Mostly the freedom to do exactly as I wish when I wish.’

  ‘And the drawbacks...?’

  A frown creased the creaminess of her brow. ‘I wasn’t aware there were any...’

  ‘No...?’

  ‘No.’

  He raised dark brows. ‘How about no one to come home to at the end of the day? To talk to and be with? To share a meal with? To go to bed with?’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I suppose it can all be summed up in one word—loneliness.’

  Was she ever lonely? Stazy wondered. Probably. No—definitely. And for the reasons Jaxon had just stated. At the end of a long day of teaching she always returned home to her empty apartment, prepared and ate her meal alone, more often than not spending the evening alone, before sleeping alone.

  That was exactly how she preferred it! Not just preferred it, but had deliberately arranged her life so it would be that way. Apart from her grandfather, she didn’t want or need anyone in her life on a permanent basis. Didn’t want or need the heartache of one day losing them—to death or otherwise.