A Delicious Deception (16 page)

‘Come here,’ he commanded softly.

The next second he had caught her hand and electrifying sensations ripped through her as he tipped her off balance, tugging her down across his lap.

‘What are you doing?’ she gasped, pretending to look shocked, wild impulses crackling through every nerve-ending from the heat that was pulsing through her veins.

‘You accused me of not giving you any attention in the past,’ he proclaimed, his mouth set with exciting purpose. ‘I wouldn’t want you thinking I was holding out on you now.’

Galvanized by his actions and by the excitement that was licking through her blood, Rayne clutched him to her with a throaty sob of pleasure as their mouths met and his hand found the eager heat of her body beneath the open shirt, massaging and moulding as it moved over her waist, along her ribcage, up and up until it found her straining breasts.

The satin cups were a hindrance to him—to them both—and, sliding a finger inside, he pulled each one down in turn to expose her breasts to his fervid gaze, accentuating their aching fullness.

She let out a shuddering gasp when he ran his hand across
them and watched the way her eyes darkened with desire as he caressed each warm mound in turn.

She had always wished her breasts were smaller, but she didn’t any more. She was suddenly proud of her voluptuous curves, knowing they emphasised her femininity, proud of the pleasure she was giving King as well as receiving in turn as he lifted her eager body to taste each tingling crest with a circling tongue.

‘Not bad for a beanpole,’ he murmured teasingly.

Twisting around so that he was half lying on top of her, his lips were suddenly following his hands on a path of sweet torture along her body, driving her crazy for him, bending her to his will.

She murmured her pleasure, arching her body in involuntary response. But there was something she needed from him before she let this happen again. Something she needed to know …

‘What about …’

She couldn’t say it at first, her silence bringing his dark head up for a second from somewhere around her middle.

‘What about what?’ he prompted, his lips over her midriff refusing to be stilled.

‘Sophie Ringwood.’

‘What about her?’

‘Are you still involved with her?’ she uttered on a shuddering breath because he’d moved back along her body and his hands were making possessive claim to her breasts once more.

‘No. It was over between us months ago,’ he murmured, his warm breath on the inner edge of her ear driving her crazy, even though she needed to be serious for a few moments, to stay in control.

‘The press didn’t seem to think so.’

‘The press just sensationalize to sell newspapers,’ he breathed along the perfumed column of her throat. ‘Surely you know that.’

‘True,’ she admitted in a voice almost strangled from the pleasure of what he was doing to her. ‘But I also believe that there’s never smoke without fire.’

Her persistence dragged him back from his sensational exploration of her body, compelling him to sit up and take notice of what she was saying. His features were flushed from his arousal and he was breathing heavily. ‘Then you’ll just have to trust me when I say that, much as the media like to make a song and dance about every woman I’m seen with, I’ve always thought it less than politic to involve myself with more than one woman at a time.’

He was trailing his fingers along her inner thigh, seeking access to that most secret part of her that was aching for his touch. But suddenly she clamped her legs together, trapping his hand between them as she asked the question which seemed ludicrous in the circumstances, but which she needed to ask.

‘Are you saying
we’re
involved?’

His irises were darkened with desire as he gazed sombrely down at her where she lay draped over his arm, but something flared in their depths beneath his heavily lidded eyes.

‘Don’t you think lying here naked in my arms constitutes an involvement?’ he put to her incredulously. ‘And that this …’ a low, almost agonised moan escaped her as his probing fingers sought and found the wet warmth of her femininity ‘… marks us as lovers?’ he suggested, sounding unashamedly possessive. ‘Unless there’s something you’re not telling me. Like you have a boyfriend back home in England—and then I think I really
will
turn you over my knee.’

He wouldn’t, of course. Intuition alone told her that. There was a reckless excitement, though, in knowing he had said it simply because he wanted her for himself.

He might have known quite a few women intimately, if the papers were to be believed. But he obviously abhorred cheating in a relationship—which was why he’d sounded so
unforgiving last night towards Grant Hardwicke and his stepmother, she realised, loving him for his morals and how principled he was, hardly daring to hope that she might have some sort of future with him.

Would he fall in love with her? Eventually? Decide that he’d had enough of top models and actresses and hard-nosed, beautiful businesswomen and settle for someone who wasn’t always vying for position with him and getting her name in the papers?

But she didn’t want to think about that because that was getting too far ahead of herself. And, anyway, she couldn’t think about anything else because his long practised fingers were working their magic and driving her crazy for him.

There was something incredibly erotic in what he was doing to her, she realised, feeling like a puppet being worked by her puppeteer. He was in control and all that was required of her was to do his bidding, which right now was to writhe against him and show him just how much pleasure he was giving her.

With her nails sinking into his arm, she clutched at him like someone drowning, sobbing and bucking as the sensually induced rhythm sent breath-quickening tingles licking along her thighs.

She had never felt so abandoned or so ungoverned as she did at that moment when, with one last thrust of her hips towards his deeply penetrating fingers, she climaxed and collapsed against him, sobbing and gasping, while he cupped her femininity and held her until the tensions throbbed out of her body.

K
ING
awoke and reached automatically for the woman lying in the big bed beside him.

Rayne was still sleeping peacefully, with her slender body turned towards him, and for a few moments he lay simply watching her, his hand still, yet resting possessively on the gentle curve of her hip.

He had made love to her almost endlessly since that first time, two nights ago, when he had come back from the clinic, having realised he had been wrong about her—that she wasn’t a gold-digger, out for her own ends—having already discovered who she was.

He marvelled now at how he hadn’t recognised her earlier. Or perhaps he had—subconsciously—he thought in retrospect. Perhaps that was why she’d got under his skin from that very first evening he had come back here and seen her standing out there on the terrace. Perhaps a part of him had been yielding to a long-lost attraction that had ended before it had even begun, although he’d never have acknowledged it then. At twenty-three he had been too busy getting his life mapped out—dating women closer to his own age, who promised to fulfil a part of him that could never be fulfilled—to really notice Lorri Hardwicke. But after she had gone he’d missed her, he realised now. Missed the way she’d looked at him like an adoring young fawn whenever he spoke to her, missed her smile, her quiet presence. Though he would never
have consciously acknowledged that either, seven years ago, he thought with a self-deprecating smile.

She stirred for a moment, snuggling closer to him, and he waited for her to open her eyes, but she didn’t. Her mouth was curved slightly as though whatever she was dreaming about pleased her, and he couldn’t help hoping that it was him.

She was warm and gentle and caring. He already knew that from the past. And whatever she had done to get herself into Mitch’s—and consequently
his
—life, she had done only with her father’s interests at heart. In fact, he found himself admiring the drive and spirit it must have taken to motivate her to act in such a way—to even think about taking on someone as intimidating and hard-bitten as Mitch.

‘I’ve lost her, King,’ he’d lamented when King, after driving Rayne back from the yacht last night, had made a flying visit to the clinic to check on his father’s condition—which he’d been grateful to learn was improving—and Mitch had told him what had transpired between him and Rayne earlier in the day. ‘Lost any respect she might have had for me—or what I thought she had for me,’ he’d corrected with a grimace, ‘when I didn’t know who she was. Can you persuade her not to think too badly of me?’ he’d appealed to King. ‘I was a mad fool—in love—when I did what I did. But what’s the point of telling that to you? I can’t expect you—least of anyone—to imagine what that’s like, can I?’

No, he couldn’t, King thought now, because he’d never been in love. And his father knew it. Knew better than anyone how he had learned from childhood—and in the cruellest way possible—the folly that lay in putting his trust in a woman. And neither Mitch’s second marriage nor any of his own cautious relationships had changed his views on that.

That didn’t stop him wanting, however. And since Lorrayne Hardwicke had unintentionally stepped into his life last week he’d been almost permanently aroused.

Just like now, he thought wryly as he lay there, hot and
hard, studying the gentle curvature of her face, framed by that wild mass of red hair, finding himself unable to stop thinking of all they had done and what he still wanted to do to her.

Do with her, he amended shamefully, because he wanted her with him for more than just good sex. He wanted to take her places, and not just to show her off as the Sophie Ringwoods of this world always wanted him to do, but to keep her all for himself. Show her new things and experiences she might be interested in and that they could discuss together—for however long it might last—while he discovered everything he didn’t already know about her. Which surely made her a pretty high contender on his list of special women, he realised, of which there had been only one or two in his adult life. And, as he still couldn’t deny, the sex was pretty good. In fact it was more than that. It was sensational.

It didn’t help cool his libido in any way to remember the way she had been with him yesterday. As if she had been on that yacht solely to give him pleasure … like when he had brought her to orgasm that first time and her wild response to him had made him feel like a billion dollars. And afterwards, when he had suggested that they go to bed, she had undressed him slowly and provocatively, caressing and adoring his body as if it were a temple, using her lips and hands and finally her soft mouth …

Feeling he was going to explode if he didn’t do something to temper his urges, he slid out of bed and abandoned all thought of waking her for the invigorating effects of a cold shower.

Rayne awoke to see the sun blazing around the edges of the blind, a fierce Mediterranean sun that regained its strength so early each day that it could have been seven a.m. or noon.

The other side of the bed was empty, she discovered, rolling on to her side, only the rumpled sheet with the imprint of King’s head on the adjoining pillow assuring her that she
hadn’t dreamed the smile-inducing pleasures of the previous night.

She felt like someone who had died from too much loving and gone to heaven, remembering how King had made himself master of her body, time after glorious time and time again.

But it wasn’t just that that had her spirits soaring this morning. It was because of knowing how compatible they were, as well as discovering that vulnerable side to King—not only over the past few days, but particularly yesterday—and the secret pleasure of having realised just how much she loved him.

She knew he had been scarred quite badly. It must have been excruciating as a small boy to be deserted like that by his own mother, she sympathised, and then not to have had a close relationship with Mitch. It was no wonder he had turned out so hard-bitten and self-sufficient, evident from the way he hadn’t yet loved anyone enough to settle down. Hadn’t taken on the role of husband and father and got himself involved in the joys and sorrows of having children of his own. But instinctively she knew that deep down he was a very lonely man, and that she could change all that if he would only let her. And to do that she had to convince him of how deeply he could trust her—convince herself that one day she could make him fall in love with her …

Having showered and dressed in lemon shorts and a lemon and white T-shirt, Rayne found King in the study, browsing through some paperwork by the filing cabinet.

‘Ah, there you are!’ he said, the smile he gave her heating her blood from the hair she’d twisted loosely on top of her head to her softly golden feet in her Indian flip-flops. ‘I thought I was going to have to come up and tickle those delightfully painted toes.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ she crooned provocatively, sidling up to him and inhaling the tantalising scent of his cologne, which emanated from beneath the white T-shirt stretched across his
wide muscular chest. He’d teamed it with pale lightweight trousers that hugged his powerful hips and legs and the whole image emphasised his fitness and hard virility.

‘Because if I had I wouldn’t have stopped with just your toes,’ he admitted with a wry tug of his mouth. ‘And where do you think we would be now?’

In paradise, Rayne thought with a secretive little smile but, running idle fingers down the exciting contours of his arm, she murmured, ‘It
is
only seven o’clock.’

He checked his watch, which was gleaming gold against the black strap spanning his wrist. ‘And have you any idea how long we were in bed?’

Not long enough, she thought, wondering how, after all their hours of lovemaking, she could want him with an almost insatiable hunger that was still demanding to be fed.

‘I had a rough night. I needed my beauty sleep,’ she declared with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

‘No, you didn’t.’ He folded her gently into his arms, pressing his lips against the ridge of her nose. ‘You’re beautiful enough,’ he breathed. ‘As for rough …’ He chuckled softly. ‘I wasn’t aware of hearing any complaints on that score last night.’