Dare

by Glenna Sinclair

  Her body may have been perfectly streamlined, but Simon's was more powerful by far. Her eyes popped open as he surged past her, his arms and shoulders working in perfect tandem to form a swimmer's wingspan she had no hope of matching. She realized too late that she had made a huge error in judgment by challenging the man to a race in his own pool.

  Her hand came down on the jutting edge of the pool, and she raised herself up from the water with a gasp. Any hope she may have had of still winning against him was crushed when she saw that Simon was awaiting her arrival. His auburn hair was dark with pool water and slicked back from his chiseled face, giving her a comprehensive look at just how strong his bone structure really was. He was gazing at her strangely, as if he didn't know what to expect.

  But Cara had lost, fair and square, even if she hadn't exactly played by the rules to start with. She turned without a word to deliver Simon's prize. Her hands came up around her back, but she froze when she felt them butt up against his own.

  “This wasn't part of the deal,” she breathed, even as her hands fell away to allow him access. She felt the clasp of her bra constrict and release beneath dexterous fingers; she thought she felt an additional stroke down her bared back, but it might have only been a glancing touch. She shivered as Simon took her bra away and reverently set it aside back on dry land.

  She turned herself fully to face him, refusing to react with the shyness she felt. Her pert breasts glowed almost incandescently beneath the water as she issued a wordless challenge to him: a real gentleman wouldn't look. But challenge or not, how could any man be expected to resist the pull between them? It might have been gravity that caused his eyes to drop and take in his reward. Though the water that they had submerged themselves in was warm, her nipples pebbled and hardened beneath his gaze. She waited for him to lift a hand—could feel that he wanted to—but the man did not.

  "One more race," he whispered, and Cara folded her arms across her chest to obscure it from view.

  "No more races. You're clearly going to win, and I have a feeling I know what the stakes are going to be this time."

  Simon grinned unabashedly. "I'll even give you a head start this time."

  She didn't know why she thought this race would turn out any differently. She had helped herself to a head start the first time, after all, but something about his smug expression made Cara believe she actually stood a chance of wiping it off his face for good.

  Less than a minute later, they were both on the opposite end of the pool, and the smug expression still hadn't left Simon's face. Cara could feel the flush that burned its way across her cheeks. There was no way she was letting the arrogant Englishman undress her any further; she hastily wriggled out of her panties, all the while resisting the urge to fling them at his face. He would probably enjoy that too much. Instead, she deposited them in a wet heap on the side of the pool and turned back to him defiantly.

  "You win," she said haughtily. "Do you play this game with all the women you invite down to your private pool, or is this a special occasion?"

  "There are no other women." Simon's smile folded into a more serious expression, almost contemplative. The admission took Cara by surprise: clearly he was wealthy, and clearly he wasn't unattractive. If anything, Simon was one of the single most attractive men she had ever seen in her life, and it wasn't just his Gentleman's Quarterly good-looks at play. He was an infuriating person to talk to, but talking to him came so easily. Meeting him for the first time out on the lawn had almost felt like reuniting with an old friend…a friend she admittedly knew nothing about. She didn't even know what part of England he was from, or why he had isolated himself out here alone in the first place.

  Cara drew closer to him. "You know…" she began quietly, "I've never been able to float. I always sank like a stone when I was a kid. That's why my parents were so adamant I learn to swim." She paused. "Will you try something with me?"

  They swam together out to the center of the pool to where Simon's feet could still touch the bottom. Cara turned herself over in the water, breasts breaching the surface to glisten in the light, her taut, smooth stomach bared to him; Simon's hands came up at once beneath the arched incline of her back to support her, and she remained floating at the top of the water. She smiled up at him, before allowing her arms to drift out over her head. While the feeling was heavenly, having his eyes riveted on her the entire time felt completely sinful. A little payback for his victory in their race against one another: she would make him hold his trophy.

  "I confess I could have never imagined myself in this situation," Simon murmured as they revolved together in the water. "Not when I first saw you standing rain-soaked at the gate yesterday. I thought you were so beautiful. My thoughts didn't do you justice."

  "I can't believe any of this either," Cara confessed as she drifted lazily at the mercy of his touch. "At first I was a little scared of this place. And you… I thought you were so infuriating."

  "And now?" Simon asked quietly. He took his hands away, and Cara floated right-side up to face him. She moved her arms instinctively around his neck to keep herself from sinking.

  "I still feel the same," she admitted. Simon was watching her lips move earnestly, but it wasn't to better understand the shape of her words. She had barely told him she found him insufferable before his mouth was swooping in to capture hers, his large hands coming up to cradle her face.

  Her reaction to the kiss was instantaneous, and in direct opposition to everything she had just said she felt about him. Cara met his challenge for a third time that afternoon by eagerly pushing back against him, opening her mouth against his and allowing his tongue to slip inside. She wrapped her legs reflexively around his waist, securing herself to him, feeling his rapidly hardening length rise up beneath her. The firm insistence of Simon's erection took her breath away as much as the dominating power of his kiss.

  He pushed them through the water until Cara felt her naked back come up against the abrasive side of the pool. She arched in protestation of being pinned, but the pressure of Simon's body against her was relentless. She was helpless in his arms, helpless to do anything but submit to the explosive way that he kissed her; she felt taken, and he hadn't even entered her yet. He pulled her full lower lip between his teeth, and Cara gasped wildly into his mouth at the sensation. One hand had come up to grasp her bare breast; Simon rolled the flesh in the heated palm of his hand as he kissed her, until both of her nipples hardened with the extremeness of her arousal. His other hand gripped her flank beneath the water, pulling her against him, making her feel his erection butting up against her entrance.

  She was completely at his mercy. An intelligent young woman with a blistering wit, and this was what he had reduced her to in an instant—a slick, aching body pliant and ready to be used as he saw fit, if only it would bring her physical release from the torturous ministrations of his touch. The hand moved up from her breast to grip the roots of her scalp, pulling her hair. Cara let her head fall back with a gasp, and Simon's mouth found the exposed curve of her throat. She clutched at him as he sucked her tender flesh, raising a mark that neither of them would be able to deny the existence of—she felt utterly claimed by him.

  "Cara." He murmured her name into the base of her neck, and she gasped her response, too dizzy to come up with anything clever, not even his own name. She was too distracted by the kiss to notice immediately that one of Simon's hands had disappeared beneath the water, and it wasn't until she felt the gentle press of it at the crevice of her thighs that she understood. She bucked in response, disbelieving what he was doing, but the hand was insistent. She felt his pointer finger unfurl and delve for her core, petting and pressing the mound of flesh until she was helplessly moaning with every stroke.

  She tried to bite down on her lip to keep quiet, but Simon would have none of that; he raised his head back up and kissed her once more, deeply and thoroughly, and Cara could taste the sweet nectar of oranges and alcohol on his lips. Then he pulled back to
admire the breathlessness of her expression, his eyes hooded with desire.

  "It's not so bad losing to me," he murmured, and in that moment Cara felt a slick finger enter her. She gave a start, gripping Simon's shoulders as he bent his mouth once more to her neck. She let her head fall back, her eyes drifting closed, as she let herself ride the sensation of—

  A door closed somewhere back down the hallway, and the two of them wrenched apart like guilty schoolchildren caught playing doctor. Cara barely had time to sink her chest back down below the water's surface before a very proper man in a suit appeared at the entrance to the underground natatorium. He looked to be in his sixties, and was such a jowly, severe-faced fellow that she wasn't at all surprised to discover was English.

  "Sir," the man addressed Simon. Simon had managed to move to the opposite end of the pool, and was currently pouring himself another glass of orange juice. Cara wondered if he actually intended to drink it, or if it was all a ruse to distract their intruder. "You told me to bring you the day's updated weather report within the hour."

  "Has it been an hour already?" Simon asked airily. Cara, too, had lost track of time. "Well, go ahead with it, Gerald."

  "Sir, it's not looking as if the rain will let up anytime soon," the butler replied. "Downpours have been predicted for the entire day, with only intermittent breaks in the weather. Thunder and lightning with possible gale-force winds have been predicted for the evening. I'm sorry, ma’am," he added, surprising Cara as he addressed her directly. "It appears as though you are to remain our guest for a while longer."

  "Oh, that's…" Cara lifted her hand up out of the water to signal it was no problem, and tried not to look at the very real problem who was currently pretending to occupy himself with the pool's glassware. "… Really, I hope I'm not intruding," she finished. It was not the complete sentence she had hoped for. Gerald the butler inclined his head, bowing stiffly, and excused himself without a further word. Once he had gone, she returned her gaze to Simon, but the man wouldn't turn around to look at her fully.

  "Sorry," he said after a very long and drawn-out moment."I, ah…haven't had company in a while."

  Cara blinked. She had no idea what to say to this. His words seemed vaguely ridiculous considering where his hands had just been, but the man remained steadfast in his refusal to resume their earlier intimacy. Instead, she watched as Simon lifted himself easily out of the water; she was too confused by his words to fully enjoy the vision of his tight and well-formed backside, but as her gaze drifted upward, any distraction she may have felt vanished in an instant.

  How had she not noticed it before? The bunched muscles of Simon's back relaxed as soon as he was back on dry land…revealing a tortured network of old scars that crossed and re-crossed the naked canvas of the man's flesh. The raised marks covered his entire left side, although they must not have extended all the way to the front—Cara was sure she would have noticed them before if they had—they trailed as far as his right shoulder before dissipating.

  Simon crossed to pull open a tall cabinet and remove two silk robes. He donned one, concealing the scars from view once more, before turning to offer her the other. By this time, Cara had glided the length of the pool and was making her way slowly up the stairs in the shallows. Simon met her at the top of the pool, and she paused, hand still on the slick railing, her legs ankle-deep in the water. She met his eyes, and saw something strange pass across his expression. Was it remorse?

  She took the offered robe eventually, and he politely turned his gaze away as she put it on. Like that was going to make a difference now to either of them.

  "Of course we don't mind having you stay with us another night," he added quickly. "I'll see to the dinner preparations, shall I? …All right. Miss Langford."

  He dismissed himself in a jumble of good manners and left. Cara gripped the shoulders of the robe, searching around her for something to find fault with. Her eyes alighted on the drained pitcher of mimosa and she glared at it. Mainly, she wanted to find fault with Simon's dutiful butler, Gerald, but the latter wasn't here at the moment. He had departed, just as Simon had, leaving her alone and physically frustrated beyond belief.

  CHAPTER 6

  Two things had been made clear to Cara in the course of that afternoon.

  One: intermittent breaks or not, the rain wasn't about to let up long enough for any tow company in the county to risk coming to her rescue.

  Two: Simon Banning, the mystery man who housed her, was an amazing lover.

  True, they hadn't gotten anywhere close to doing the deed—at least, not as close as Cara in that moment would have wanted—but she felt that there were plenty of clues to lead her to this conclusion all the same. She tried not to imagine that it was her journalist's instincts that were being put to use now, but the evidence was increasingly being stacked against him: evidence like the sinfully skillful way he had first kissed; the way he had pinned her beneath him against the wall without an ounce of reservation about it; the expert way his fingers had caressed and opened her to him. He had made her crave the treatment, crave his touch and his touch alone, and now he had left Cara high and dry in every maddening sense of the words.

  "'Sorry'?" she hissed to her reflection in the mirror. "'I haven't had company in a while'?"

  She was currently holed up in her quarters and sitting in front of the vanity. It had taken a while to find her way back, admittedly, considering that Simon had just left her there alone in the basement story of the mansion. It was only after she had wandered the upper halls for ten minutes in nothing but an expensive bathrobe that she had managed to grab hold of a servant and request a guide back to her room.

  Her aggravation with her host was full-bodied. Any positive thoughts she had been entertaining about the man now seemed to have vanished completely; the only credit she would grudgingly admit to giving him was that he knew what he was doing when it came to making love. Her body still burned with the echoes of his touch. She might have felt extremely cross and annoyed by him, but there was no part of her that would resist him if he came on to her again. Cara was so mixed up in Simon that she had already arrived at the conclusion that the only way to get the man out of her mind—and out of her system—was to let him finish what he had started.

  But that seemed unlikely now. Cara set her hairbrush aside on the vanity, and tried not to notice the disappointed look that her reflection wore at the thought. She needed to turn her mind to other things; otherwise she risked going crazy. Inevitably, her thoughts returned to the vision of Simon's sculpted, dripping body, but she decided to hone her attention in on something very different this time.

  His scars. The memory was still fresh in her head, and she thought she could recall the old injuries clearly now. How had he gotten them? Was the story behind them what had contributed to his complete withdrawal from society? They were expansive, but hardly hideous—at least to Cara's mind. They were storied, and interesting, which were traits she coveted as a student. They gave fascinating character to a man that she was increasingly starting to suspect might be otherwise physically perfect in every way.

  So what was the story behind Simon Banning? Was it vanity at a perceived disfigurement that kept him imprisoned inside his own vast estate? As much as she currently didn't want to give the man credit for anything, Cara somehow doubted it. Simon was a bit eccentric, but she doubted the scars were capable of striking a true blow to his confidence. Maybe it was the circumstances surrounding how he had acquired them, then, that had traumatized him.

  She sighed in frustration and rose from her seat at the vanity. All of this would be relatively simple to work out if the man himself were here. Cara would have had a few other things to work, too, with Simon in her bedroom.

  He did not join her for dinner that evening, but she found him in one of the downstairs studies, nursing what looked like a strong drink and staring out the window. Rain buffeted the side of the house, driving against the mansion's foundations so relentlessly that it
no longer sounded like the onslaught of individual drops from the morning, but more like a dull roar. Simon turned when she entered, his expression severe.

  "It's not getting any better out there," he said, but Cara cared nothing about the weather. She crossed to the center of the room by the blazing hearth and stood before it with her arms stubbornly crossed as she glared at him.

  "I'm leaving tomorrow," she informed him. "Rain or shine."

  "Rain," Simon said with certainty.

  "I wanted to thank you for your hospitality," she continued, as if she hadn't heard him. "But there are a few things I think you should know, as one person to another, and I don't think these are things your servants will feel comfortable telling you."

  Simon's expression changed immediately to one of amusement, and Cara wished the reappearance of the man's smile didn't flood her with momentary relief. She didn't like seeing him look worried, or haunted; she wondered what expression he was used to wearing when she wasn't here. Simon detached from the window to join her by the fire, alighting on the opposite end of the mantle and propping his forearm comfortably atop it. He leaned toward the warmth of the fire and sipped his drink, eyes never leaving her. He was dressed in slacks and a drab-colored sweater once more, but the light of the fire edged him in gold; he couldn't help but look wealthy in his complete ease. "The staff tells me everything," he said. "Even the things I don't want to hear. That's why I keep them hired on. Do you really think you have any special insight into me after having only been here a day?"

  Cara was undeterred. "This is how I'm choosing to express my gratitude to you," she said. "These are just my observations, and you can take them or leave them. I think you have a drinking problem."

  Simon's eyebrows lifted at the unexpected introduction to her list. He opened his mouth as if about to argue, before his gaze was drawn to the conspicuous crystalline glass he held in his other hand. Cara almost imagined she could smell the pungent aroma of the expensive alcohol drifting to her from where she stood.