‘Ah, don’t be so stuffy, Alix,’ he replied. ‘Or have you got something going with Tennant, and don’t want me spoiling it?’
‘I most certainly have not,’ Alix replied honestly enough. She didn’t add, but I wish I did have, and suspected young Sanderson wasn’t astute enough to see it for himself. ‘I simply don’t enjoy dancing so closely, that’s all,’ she added.
‘Well, I certainly do,’ he replied, but for the rest of that dance he obeyed her wishes without further question and said nothing that required Alix to think a great deal before answering. And when they returned to the table not before time, Alix personally reflected, Derek seemed to have abandoned some of the intensity of his attentions
For that she was well and truly thankful, especially when Quinn broke off his conversation with the older Sanderson and himself asked her to dance.
‘I’m sorry this developed into so much of a business evening, he said once they were on the dance floor ‘I really didn’t intend to have us stuck with the Sandersons at all but there were one or two things that needed straightening out. And I must say you’ve been extremely helpful.’
‘I really can’t see how,’ Alix replied truthfully. ‘All I seem to have done is keep the son’s mind off ...’ She halted, looking up to meet the laughter in his eyes. ‘You planned it just that way, didn’t you?’ she asked then, and didn’t really need his slow nod of reply.
‘Actually, plan is a rather strong word,’ Quinn said then. ‘What I actually planned was for us to have dinner alone, but I can’t deny that your ... diversion ... of Derek’s interest has allowed me to conclude my business with his father a good deal more quickly.’
‘I don’t particularly fancy being used as a ... diversion,’ Alix replied, shifting herself rigidly away from his encircling arms. ‘There’s something rather cheap about the implications.’
‘Well, if so, I certainly apologise,’ Quinn responded, ‘because that was never intended. As a matter of fact I thought you rather enjoyed the young pup’s attentions.’
‘Not particularly,’ Alix snapped.
‘Who is it you know that he reminds you so much of?’ Quinn asked, ignoring the icy tones in her voice as he continued to whirl her expertly around the small dance floor. ‘Your former fiancé?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes,’ said Alix. ‘Although I fail to see what difference that makes.’
‘Humph! I would have thought your taste had matured somewhat by now,’ he replied with stunning accuracy.
‘And what makes you so certain it hasn’t?’ Alix asked.
He laughed, a low, guttural growl of a laugh. ‘Well, I didn’t notice you keeping him at arm’s length when you were dancing.’
‘Perhaps I had little choice.’
‘Or perhaps you just liked it,’ he said, and she looked up to meet eyes that seemed horribly cold.
‘And what if I did?’ she replied in an about-face that surprised even herself. ‘I fail to see why you should be complaining about it, since it so aptly served your purpose.’
‘Who’s complaining?’ And then, after a pause that seemed hours long, ‘Is he really that much like ... what’s his name ... Bruce?’
‘Only in appearance,’ Alix replied. ‘I could hardly imagine them being much alike otherwise.’
‘They obviously fancy the same type in women,’ he grinned, ‘not that I’d hold that against them.’
Alix’s heart thundered inside her breast so that it seemed to fill the room, and she was certain that Quinn must also be able to hear it. Or feel it through the soft materials that seemed only to transfer his body heat to her with a strange, burning intensity.
And then it was as if he had heard, because his arms tightened slowly to draw her against him, not with the impetuous passion that Derek had shown, but with an inexorable gentleness that Alix couldn’t have resisted if she’d tried.
As if to his silent command, the music changed to a slow, rhythmic number that allowed them to drift like thistledown around the small dance floor, and Alix was constantly aware of the touch of his hand at her back, of his thigh moving against hers in the turns. And of the scent of him as her cheek snuggled close in against his chest.
It was a clean, heady fragrance, like heather and old wine, and it filled her being with a need for him that was almost frightening in its intensity.
She let her left hand curl around his neck, unconsciously toying with the shaggy hair as her cheek nestled against him. She seemed to flow against him, into him, melting in his close embrace as the music surrounded them, creating its own oblivion. She didn’t want it to end, not ever; instead let her dance this way for ever in an unceasing dream of contentment.
Contentment quickly ended. ‘Hey, don’t go to sleep on me, Quinn whispered into her ear, shifting so that they were again in a more or less conventional dance position.
Sleep? Was the man blind, she wondered ... or just quite deliberately obtuse? She looked up to meet his sparkling green eyes, hoping desperately to find in them something of her own feelings, something of her own gentle contentment. No such thing; Quinn was already looking away, nodding his handsome head in response to some unseen signal from the Sandersons.
And then, damnably, he was guiding Alix back to their table, moving easily and without apparent regret from the magic wonderland she had found with him on the dance floor.
To her surprise, he was immediately Quinn Tennant the businessman, and when Alix heard him suggest that they all return to his suite for a nightcap, because he had some other drawings there that Sanderson senior wanted another look at, she could have wept her frustration.
On the drive back, she was a physical obstruction, seated between the older Sanderson and Quinn as they talked business in the hire car’s rear seat, while Derek shared the front with the silent driver.
But once back at the suite, she was easily nudged into the somewhat more acceptable role of hostess, pouring the men’s drinks and sitting quietly for the few minutes they devoted to a reassessment of the drawings. Mercifully, it didn’t last long. The elder Sanderson indicated his intention to depart, and all three men rose in a body.
‘May I see you to your room before I leave, Alix?’ asked Derek then, and Alix, momentarily flustered by the request and the impossibility of an answer, could only look at him dumbly.
What to say? She was searching for a gracious refusal when Quinn’s deep voice broke the silence.
‘Certainly, Derek,’ he replied quietly. ‘It’s right over there.’ And he nodded towards the door to Alix’s bedroom with a look that said far more than his words and implied even more yet.
Alix’s blush of embarrassment very nearly matched the look of total incredulity on Derek’s face, and she would have laughed at his expression but for the implications of Ouinn’s wicked, mocking grin.
‘I see,’ Derek replied slowly. ‘Well, in that case ...’ His voice trailed off as he moved towards the door with his father, who seemed inordinately amused by the whole thing. Derek paused at the door, then surprisingly reached over to take Alix’s hand. ‘Perhaps I’ll see you at the Show tomorrow,’ he whispered softly, then stepped away into the reverberating silence that heralded their departure.
Alix stood there, numbed by a pain that encapsulated her, as Quinn strolled over to pour them fresh drinks. How could he have done such a thing? It was as if she’d been clubbed, and her mind simply refused to accept the enormity of it all.
When Quinn returned to reach her glass towards her, AIix took it without thinking, her fingers closing spasmodically around the glass as if it were somehow a link with distant reality. Was she mistaken? But she couldn’t be. This man, Quinn Tennant — this man she loved — had not only humiliated her beyond all belief, but now he was giving her a fresh drink as if nothing at all had happened.
And ... he was laughing! Not out loud, but she could see the laughter bubbling in his green eyes, a mocking, horrid, evil laughter at the knowledge of what he had so deliberately done.
‘He’s persistent; you have to give him credit for that,’ he said then, and Alix stood silently, almost seeing each word emerge to float in the air between them.
‘I don’t ... believe this,’ she whispered, not entirely sure that she had spoken aloud. Her eyes were locked on Quinn’s and she held the glass like a lifeline. Quinn’s eyebrows rose in question, but he didn’t speak.
‘You’re mad,’ she whispered, quite audibly this time. ‘Worse than mad. You’re absolutely hateful . evil ... contemptible! No, you’re beyond contempt Her eyes were wide with disbelief and welling with tears that threatened her vision.
Quinn’s laugh was a bark, a harsh, resonant sound in the living stillness surrounding them.
‘You must be more hung up on . . . Bruce than I thought,’ he growled, ‘if you get this upset at me putting young Sanderson in his place.’
‘I couldn’t give a damn for Bruce,’ Alix snarled back. But you ... you’ve made me look cheap ... just to put Derek in his place? What ... are you?’ Her voice climbed almost to a scream, then dropped away to the barest of whispers.
‘Don’t you think you’re over-dramatising this?’ Quinn asked, still standing, drink in hand, and looking totally calm and unruffled.
Alix stared down into her glass for an instant, then rage gave motion to her body. With a single flick of her wrist she flung the contents of the glass into his face as she screamed at him.
‘Over-dramatising? I’ll give you over-dramatising, you bastard! Can’t you understand plain English? You’ve made me look cheap and disgusting, just to put some puppy in his place?’
Quinn recoiled only slightly, and instead of hardening with the anger she expected, his eyes took on a speculating expression. Then he reached out with one hand and cupped her chin, holding her face so that he could probe her eyes with his own.
Alix half raised her free hand to strike at him, but the gesture died stillborn as those eyes transfixed her. His fingers tightened slightly upon her chin, and then he was pulling her closer to him, pulling so slightly that the movement was a slow, barely noticeable act.
‘No,’ he said then, the word emerging as a slight whisper. ‘No, Not cheap, and never, never disgusting. Only ... very desirable ...’
His lips followed the words down to take her mouth, then, effectively halting whatever retort might be forthcoming. The kiss was slow, deliberate, possessive. And demanding. His lips burned like a brand, and once his mouth had locked them together his hand slid from its capture of her chin to begin a light, feather-soft descent down the column of her throat. Each movement, each touch was a deliberate, sensuous assault upon the fragility of her emotions, and when his hand slid down to the hollow of her throat, the fingers of the other hand flexed like electric wires around the softness at the base of her spine.
Alix’s mind was a kaleidoscope of emotions, loving him, hating him, whirling between enthralment and scarlet, freezing repulsion. But her body suffered no such confusion. When his fingers touched her breasts, the nipples roused themselves to meet the touch; when the rigid warmth of his masculinity seared through the clothing between them, her most intimate nerves cried out their submissiveness.
Quinn held her hard against him, their bodies moulding as his fingers stroked and caressed her from the feverish heat of her bare neck and shoulders to the swelling softness of her upper thighs. Her mind cried out against him screaming its silent defiance of his expert lovemaking’ shouting her hatred of him, whispering her love.
And her hips pressed against him with a pliant, need-driven boldness as her fingers laced about his neck, her lips joined his in the search for fulfilment. When his hands gently turned her so that he could free her breasts to the searing assault of his lips, she helped him and screamed inside for him to stop. When his searching fingers fumbled with the fastenings of the dress, she trembled and feared and kicked him in her mind, but her body stayed still and did nothing to hinder the progress of those fingers.
Her mind screamed out his name. Devil ... devil, devil! But her lips whispered, ‘Quinn ... Quinn,’ against the tormenting exploration of his lips.
The dress slid from her shoulders, pausing only momentarily at her hips before his urging fingers thrust it down to fall m a crumpled heap around her feet. The half- slip followed it and she writhed with him as her bra relinquished heaving breasts to the attention of his lips.
But when his arm slid beneath her knees and he stooped to lift her, carrying her like a child to the doorway of his bedroom and through it, her mind took strength from the respite and she kicked out in fear and anger.
When he laid her down upon the vastness of the big double bed, she rolled across it and landed athletically on the floor beyond, turning to sprint for the doorway and the lighted area beyond.
Quinn caught her easily, turning her body back against him as he searched for her mouth with his lips, silent, and the more to be feared because of it. He was neither rough nor over-gentle, but his insistence and total expertise was beyond anything Alix could summon to combat it.
Again she felt the heat of him against her, and now there was so little between them that her body seemed to catch fire from his magic fingers and his searching, compelling mouth.
Alix’s body trembled upon the brink of total surrender, but her mental strength surged upward to take a final desperate stand.
‘All right, Mr Tennant ... take what you’ve paid for, she gasped aloud, her body going rigid with the words. He would take her now, she was sure of it. But he would take only her body. Alix could not, would not allow him anything beyond that.
‘Paid ... for?’ The words escaped him in a slow, painful expulsion that revealed how far removed his active mind had been. And then he was no longer against her; his hands touched only her shoulders as he thrust her away so brutally that she almost fell.
His eyes burned like the green fires of hell as he stood, then, looking down at her with a fierceness that sparked like lightning across the space between them. And he turned away, lurching through the doorway to his room, slamming the door behind him with a sound like the crack of doom.
Alix stood for a moment, trembling. Then, with a cry that poured up uncontrolled from her heart, she grabbed up her discarded clothing and fled to the questionable sanctuary of her own room.
Precipitous flight was the primary thought in her confused and shocked consciousness. Without even bothering to dress herself, she grabbed up the telephone and asked for a connection to the airline offices. There must be a flight. Now. Immediately.
But there was not. When she was finally connected a rather bored-sounding reservations clerk told her the next two flights would not be until later that morning; and they were booked solid. The first possible plane she could catch didn’t leave until the afternoon.
Alix slammed down the telephone in a paroxysm of rage and shame. She couldn’t stay! She simply couldn’t. To have to face Quinn Tennant in the morning? Throwing on her robe, she began to toss clothing helter-skelter into her suitcase, oblivious to the wrinkling and mess that she created.
And then the tears started, welling from her eyes in a blinding torrent that prohibited any further action. How could she have allowed things to go so far? How could her body have betrayed her so wantonly ... and worse, how could her rapier tongue have so viciously assaulted Quinn for merely doing what both of them wanted?
Her pillow was saturated by the time she ceased crying but her idea of instant flight had also dissipated. Where indeed, could she flee to at three o’clock in the morning?
Even in the aftermath of the traumatic situation, Alix’s body paid scant attention to the machinations of her mind Where Quinn’s lips had touched her, she tingled. Where his hateful-delightful fingers had caressed her, she could still feel the rousing pleasure of their touch. Her soft lips were swollen and over-sensitive; even the touch of her own tongue recalled the impelling touch of his. Never in her life had Alix’s body been so aroused, and never had she felt so totally he
lpless ... or so totally ashamed.
She was not that inexperienced. She should have been able to turn Quinn off without being forced to insult him so provocatively. Had she wanted to ... but of course she had not. In retrospect Alix was forced to admit that her own desire had more than matched his, and if anything her control had been less.
Pushing her half-filled suitcase aside, she sprawled across the bed, head propped on the pillows, and relived the experience again and again in her mind. She formulated other words she might have said, other actions she might have taken. And she allowed herself, almost unwillingly, to speculate on what would have happened had she said nothing, merely allowed the flaring of their passions to burst into full-bodied, living fulfilment. And for a moment at least, she wished it had happened.
Instead—what? A total destruction of everything. What must Quinn think of her? If anything. And worse what would he thmk of her tomorrow . . . today? She fell asleep still wondering.
‘Alix ... breakfast in twenty minutes!’
She opened her sleep-smudged eyes with a start. Had it been... but it must have been Quinn speaking. Alix froze. Her mouth quivered, opened, closed. But nothing came out. She pushed herself partly upright and stared at the door where the fingers — his fingers — had knocked.
‘AIix?’ There was no anger in the voice, no contempt. Only a slight inflection of concern. ‘You all right?’
‘Y ... y ... yes,’ she replied tentatively, surprised to hear the word actually emerge from her dry but still-tender lips.
‘Right! Twenty minutes ... or do you need more?’
‘No . .. no, that’s fine,’ she replied cautiously. ‘I’m just ... what time is it?’
‘Six-thirty.’ Was there a hint of chuckle in that abrupt reply? He must be lying. Why in heaven’s name would he waken her at such a ridiculous hour?
The Everywhere Man Page 12
