Mistress: Hired for the Billionaire's Pleasure (15 page)

As if to emphasise this fact, Felix uttered a soft, clear sound that reached right into Orlando’s heart and wrapped itself around it. He dipped his head, closing his eyes as his mouth brushed the top of the baby’s downy head and breathed in. He smelt of baby powder and roses, and Orlando felt a knife turn in his ribs.

In the past nightmarish week his careful defences had been battered by a succession of powerful emotions. But he was used to keeping emotion at bay. He was a defence expert, for God’s sake. He knew all the tricks.

Keep information on a need-to-know basis. To the point. Impersonal.

But she’d really got him now, hadn’t she? Somehow, without him even noticing she had simply dissolved all his barriers until his heart lay exposed—as defenceless as the child in his arms.

God, for the first time in a year he felt almost human. Downstairs, sharing a meal in the candlelight he had forgotten, actually forgotten, that he wasn’t
the person he used to be,
as Arabella had put it. Suddenly that person had ceased to matter. He was himself now, and Rachel had made him that.

But with humanity came pain. He could feel it now, crouching in the velvet darkness around him, waiting. He could open his heart to Felix, and take on the anguish of knowing he would never be a proper father, or he could keep him at arm’s length, and as a punishment have to endure the torture of having Rachel close but impossibly forbidden.

Orlando Winterton was no stranger to suffering. But losing his sight was like a paper cut compared to the agonising prospect of losing his heart.

She longed to go to him but she didn’t want to intrude. This was what she’d hoped for. She couldn’t break the moment now.

So she stayed where she was, watching in silent hope and fear and longing as Orlando lifted Felix higher in his arms and dropped a kiss onto the top of his head.

Maybe she did make a sound, because the next thing she knew he was looking towards her. Had she not known, she would never have picked up the almost imperceptible note of uncertainty in his low voice.

‘Rachel?’

She went forward into the room. ‘Here’s his milk.’

‘You do it.’

‘Uh-uh. You have a magic touch—he’s almost asleep already. If I take him he’ll wake up again.’ She put the bottle in his hand. ‘Look—you just hold it for him like that, and he’s clever enough to take it for himself…’ Felix’s little questing mouth found the teat of the bottle and sucked powerfully. Rachel watched surprise flicker over Orlando’s shadowed face as he felt the tug, and then she quickly turned away, walking over to the bedside table and turning on her iPod, unleashing the first shimmering notes of Chopin’s
Nocturne
in
E Minor
into the room.

Orlando’s mouth twitched into a smile. ‘I thought he preferred a live performance?’ he murmured, so quietly that she had to go and stand beside him to catch what he was saying.

‘I guess I’d be lying if I pretended I only played for his benefit,’ she whispered apologetically.

He frowned. ‘You miss it?’

‘Of course. It’s been my life for as long as I can remember. It’s like losing a part of myself.’ Suddenly she realised what she was saying, and stopped just in time. ‘Oh…’ she breathed in relief. ‘He’s asleep…’ Gently she took the bottle from Orlando. ‘You put him down. I’ll be outside.’

She left quickly, before he could argue. Waiting on the landing, she listened intently, praying that Felix wouldn’t choose this moment to do one of his amazing instant wake-ups.

He didn’t. A few moments later Orlando came out and pulled the door half shut. As he turned round Rachel saw with a shiver that the barriers were back in place. His face was perfectly blank. She stepped forward.

‘You see? You did it. You did it brilliantly. You fulfilled your side of the promise, and so now I have to fulfil mine.’ She was trying hard, so very, very hard, to keep the break from her voice. ‘You’ve shown me that you’ll love him and look after him, so now I have to do as I promised and go quietly.’

‘No.
No.
’

He took a step towards her, pulling her into his arms with something like desperation. He heard her cry out in sorrow and longing in the instant before his mouth found hers, and he felt her need as forcefully as he felt his own. It was agonising, impossible to endure, when the prospect of release was so within reach—like withholding drugs from an addict; he knew it was for his own good, but, God, he didn’t care any more. At some point this evening he had gone way, way beyond caring about what might happen to him in the future, or about anything that he had been or felt in the past.

Everything was simple. He wanted Rachel. He wanted the firelight and the candleglow and the warmth and her vibrant, blazing hair. He was tired of endless darkness and cold.

‘Orlando—’ She tore her mouth from his, and he felt her hands push his face from hers, holding him at arm’s length. ‘I can’t—’

She had been going to say that she couldn’t settle for just one night, but the words died on her swollen lips as she looked into the indescribable green of his eyes and knew that she could. Whatever he was offering, she would take it. If she had to leave him tomorrow it would be better to have something to hold on to, to remember, than nothing.

‘Rachel?’ His voice was sharp, his eyes blazing into hers searchingly, and she had to remind herself that he couldn’t see her, couldn’t read the blatant longing in her face.

‘I can’t help wanting you,’ she said in a hoarse whisper, dropping her gaze from his tortured face and pressing her mouth to the hollow at the base of his throat.

‘I know.’ It was a moan of despair. ‘I’ve tried, but I’m lost…’

‘Then we’re lost together,’ she sobbed, reaching up to pull his mouth back to hers, breathing in the scent of him, feeling the hardness of his stubble-roughened jaw against her palms. They stumbled backwards, and then she felt him grasp her hands, and he was pulling her along the corridor, quickly, urgently, until they both broke into a run.

They turned a corner into the front landing, where there were no lights on, and the inky shadows enveloped them. Rachel’s footsteps slowed uncertainly and Orlando turned, taking both her hands in his strong, sure ones, drawing her forward.

‘You’re afraid of the dark?’

She stopped, her hold on his hands tightening, so he couldn’t help but be pulled back to her. ‘Not when I’m with you,’ she said throatily, standing on tiptoe to reach his ear.

The low note of desire in her voice seemed magnified in the blackness. A second later Orlando was scooping her into his arms and striding down the remainder of the corridor to his room. Kicking open the door, he hesitated just inside the threshold to find her mouth with his, and her hand went up to hold his head, sliding across the hard plane of his cheek until her fingers were entwined in his hair, pressing him deeper into her.

He let her slither from his arms, setting her back on her feet so his hands were free to explore and reveal. The room was velvet black, and they were both sightless; he could feel her hands clumsily seeking the buttons to his shirt, fumbling to work them free. Her own shirt was soft, clinging perfectly to her narrow body, and without hesitation he swept it over her head.

He groaned as his hands found the rose-petal perfection of her skin, dropping his head hungrily to the silken dome of her shoulder, scraping his teeth against it, feeling the powerful shudder of desire that shook her as he trailed his fingers around her ribs to the fastening of her bra. Helplessly she grabbed his shirt in her fist, twisting it, pulling…

‘I can’t…Orlando—take it off.’

He pulled it over his head and she heard the soft sound it made as it landed on the floor at their feet. She took in a shivering gasp. For a moment they stood inches apart, unable to see each other but exquisitely aware. Then Rachel took a small step towards him, so that her nipples skimmed his bare chest. It was all she could do not to cry out in devastating ecstasy as she heard his indrawn breath and felt his head tip backwards.

It was the point of no return. Grasping her shoulders in both hands, he crushed his mouth down on hers, and she felt herself dissolving, disappearing into the chasm of yearning that she’d been tiptoeing around all week. She didn’t know how they made it onto the bed, how the rest of their clothes disappeared, was only aware of the feel of him under her damp thighs, the hardness of his jutting hip bones, the concave sweep of his stomach, ridged with muscle, and beneath that the smooth, hard length of his erection. She was kneeling up, over him, and his hands came up to hold her steady, spanning her ribs, measuring, discovering, moving reverently over her breasts, her collarbone…

He was
seeing
her, she thought hazily. And that was her last coherent thought as she gripped him with her knees, rising up to take him inside her, and abandoned herself to blissful sensation.

The picture was shattered as the telephone on the bedside table began to ring.

She felt a dart of alarm. Telephones ringing in the middle of the night were only ever bad news weren’t they? But every inch of her was still blissed out and glowing from Orlando’s touch, and the outside world still seemed a long, long way off. With Orlando she felt safe.

In the darkness she could dimly make out the sweeping arc of his arm, moving over her to pick up the telephone, could feel the flex of his muscular chest beneath her cheek. She found she was smiling as she listened to his husky sleep-drenched voice.

‘Orlando Winterton.’

And then she felt the smile dissolve from her face as he sat up. Moving sideways onto the cold pillow, she heard him swear viciously. She could just make out the muscles moving beneath the skin of his broad back as he thrust a hand into his hair. When he spoke his voice was steely.

‘
Hell.
How is she?’

Rachel’s heart had begun to thud uncomfortably, and the heavy contentment in her limbs had been replaced with icy pinpricks of dread. She could hear the voice on the other end of the phone, but not make out what it was saying. It sounded ridiculously tiny and innocuous; how bizarre that it could shatter her brief moment of happiness.

‘What do you mean, you can’t tell me?’ Orlando got up angrily. For a moment she caught a brief glimpse of his magnificent body before it melted, ghost-like, into the blackness of the huge room and she was left with nothing to do but listen.

‘I know I’m not her next of kin…but I’m the father of her child, for God’s sake!’

So. There was no mistaking to whom he was referring. Or the anxiety in his voice.

Quietly Rachel slipped out of bed and found her way back to her own room. Without Orlando the darkness of the old house frightened her—but not nearly as much as the emptiness inside herself.

Bloody Arabella.

‘I’ve made phone calls. All the Paris flights are booked up until this evening, so I’ve called in some favours with the RAF. We leave from Northolt at eleven.’

Rachel’s head snapped round. ‘We?’

Orlando sighed and pushed a hand through his hair. ‘Sorry. I should have asked. She’ll want to see Felix, so I’d like you to come with me.’

It was a measure, thought Rachel desolately, of her utter enslavement to him that she only could feel relief. How astonishingly humiliating. She was actually
glad
to be accompanying him to the bedside of the woman he loved, because being left behind without him was too terrible to contemplate.

‘OK.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘I’ll go and get some things together.’

Orlando got up from the table and pushed his chair in with a violent scraping sound that set his teeth on edge. What was one more lie to add to the sprawling web of deception that his life had somehow become? he thought viciously. Arabella hadn’t asked to see her son; she wouldn’t be so selfless. No. Orlando wanted Rachel to come for far less noble reasons.

Because he couldn’t face the journey on his own.

And because he was terrified that if he left her she wouldn’t be there when he got back.