Pride & Consequence Omnibus (6 page)

Keira was stunned by the breadth of his vision. ‘It’s a very ambitious project,’ was all she could find to say.

‘I’m a very ambitious man,’ he told her.

And a very sexy man. An unnervingly charismatic and sensually disturbing man. Surely it wasn’t possible for the space inside the vehicle to have become smaller, so that she was forced to be more aware of his physical presence as a man? It was the fault of the bright sunlight that she had to turn her head to avoid its glare, and was thus obliged to look at the way his hands held the steering wheel—as knowledgeably and masterfully as he had held her last night.

How had her thoughts managed to slip sideways into that forbidden place she knew they must not go? Keira wondered angrily. It was almost as though her own body was working against her in some way, trying to undermine her.

So what if he was sexy and charismatic and...and sensually disturbing? He was also cruel and unkind and arrogant, incapable of judging her fairly, and she would be a complete fool to let herself be caught in any kind of sexual attraction to him. But wasn’t the truth that she was already acutely aware of him as a man?

Keira could feel her heart thumping. She must not give in to this unfamiliar and unwanted vulnerability.

‘There’s a fabric designer whose fabrics might work well here,’ she told Jay, putting aside her personal concerns to focus on her work. ‘He might be prepared to design and produce some fabrics specifically to order for us. What I’m thinking of is using the hot colours India is famous for, but in a more modern way—stripes and checks, perhaps, in thick hessian and slubbed linen, coarse cottons rather than sheer silks. Fabrics that have a modern appeal to them but still an Indian feel. We could have light fittings in coloured mosaic glass, but in modern shapes.’

Her own imagination was taking fire now, leaping ahead of her, illuminating the way just as the mosaic glass lanterns she was visualising would illuminate the cool shadows of enclosed courtyard gardens and rooms.

The fabrics she was envisaging would work just as well with modern pared-down minimalist furniture in plastic and chrome as they would with more ornate traditional things.

She was as fiercely passionate about her work as he was, Jay recognised reluctantly. He didn’t want to acknowledge that they shared a certain mind-set, he didn’t want to find that he admired her professionalism, and he certainly didn’t want to have to admit even to himself that he had actually enjoyed talking to her about his vision for the future of this development because he had sensed that, unlike so many other women he had known, she was genuinely interested in what he was doing.

Instead he focused on the sensuality of the way she talked about her work. It was like watching an image come to life, her passion illuminating her expression. The same way she herself would come to life in his arms in the heat of passion, offering him her body and her pleasure, inciting him to take it and to take her, exciting and denying him until he was driven to possess her in every way imaginable.

His body tightened with a desire he had to punish her for causing.

‘You paint a very sensual picture. Deliberately so, I suspect.’ His voice was harsh and accusatory.

‘I was simply describing a light fitting. If you choose to see something sensual in that then that is up to you.’ Keira defended herself even whilst her heart thudded into her ribs.

‘You did not consider it sensual yourself? There are those who believe that the underlying message of the
Kama Sutra
is that everything we are is designed for sexual and sensual pleasure.’

The shock caused by his words sent a sharp thrill zig-zagging down her spine, as though he had actually touched her there himself. She could feel the warmth of his breath heating her skin, just as his words were heating her already fevered imagination.

The
Kama Sutra
! It was unfair, surely, that he should refer to a such a book after what he had said to her about her having to beg him for sex? Was he deliberately trying to test her?

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she told him sharply. ‘It isn’t a book I’ve ever felt any inclination to read.’ There—that should make it plain to him that she was sticking firmly to
business.

‘Because you don’t feel you have anything to learn from it?’

‘Books instructing women to debase themselves for a man’s pleasure will never be something I’d want to learn from,’ Keira hit back.

‘The
Kama Sutra
contains no suggestion of debasement of anyone. Rather it is about the honing of mutual pleasure, the giving and taking of that pleasure, the sensual and sexual education of both male and female so that they can experience the greatest degree of mutual pleasure with and for one another. I am surprised that you did not know that.’

If she could have walked away from him she would have done so, Keira knew. Anything to get away from the taunting softness of that male voice, painting images inside her head that made her ache as though her whole body was on fire. Images which had no right to be there and which she did not
want
to be there.

‘It’s time for us to head back.’

His abrupt change of subject was a relief, but Keira still felt it wise to keep her distance from him as they headed back towards the four-by-four over the rutted and rock-strewn ground. He was walking very fast, his longer legs carrying him over the rough ground far more swiftly than her own, and in her haste not to look unprofessional and helpless she started to walk faster, ignoring the danger in the loose rocks and deep gulleys carved into the dusty road by the wheels of heavy excavation plant.

They had almost reached the four-by-four when it happened. A loose stone beneath her foot rolled away into one of the gulleys, causing her to lose her balance.

Jay heard Keira’s exclamation of alarm and turned back, moving swiftly towards her, reaching her just in time to catch her as she stumbled.

His chest was on a level with her eyes and Keira could see its fierce rise and fall. It mesmerised her as much as the hot male scent of his body, sending out a message that locked on to her own female hormones, dizzying and almost drugging them with awareness of his masculinity. She could feel the heat of the sun on her back, but it was as nothing compared to the heat burning through her from the grip of Jay’s hands on her arms.

All he was doing was steadying her. She knew that. But to her body his hold was dangerously reminiscent of the way he had held her when he had kissed her, and she had to fight down its instinctive urge to close the gap between them. If he kissed her now he would taste of salt and heat and male hormones...

It must be the shock of her unwanted sexual response to him that was responsible for the feeling that somehow time had slowed down, and with it the beat of her own heart, as though both of them were caught up in some kind of mystical spell, Keira thought dizzily. She could see where the shadow was just beginning to darken the line of Jay’s jaw, and she had an overwhelming longing to reach out and touch it with her fingertips, and then to trace the curve of his mouth. The sensuality of the contrast between them would, she knew, be burned into her touch in a way that would make her ache to feel that contrast against her own flesh. It would be so easy to do, so very easy.

He knew what she was doing, Jay assured himself. She was trying to use his own maleness against him, knowing what effect her proximity would have on him. He had never known a woman so skilled at using his own sexuality against him. Where other women were foolish enough to blatantly thrust themselves on him, for him to either take or repulse as his mood dictated, she was far more subtle and skilled. Dangerously so, he recognised grimly, since her subtle waiting game had already resulted in arousing him. He shouldn’t have referred to the
Kama Sutra,
Jay acknowledged. Doing so had conjured up images inside his head that had weakened his defences: images of sensuality and love-play in which her pale naked body was his to arouse and enjoy.

If he kissed her now...

Panicked by what she was thinking—and feeling—Keira told herself that it was relief she felt when Jay removed his hands from her arms and she was free to step back from him. What was wrong with her? Didn’t she recognise her own danger and how foolish it was for her to keep having these wholly inappropriate and unwanted thoughts? It was as though some stranger had taken possession of her, and she was no longer in control of her own thoughts and feelings.

‘Thanks,’ she told him huskily, striving to appear normal, but avoiding looking directly at him.

She had done it again, Jay thought grimly. She had aroused him and then walked away. No woman did that to him and got away with it—especially not this one.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘O
NCE
YOU
’
VE
SEEN
the scale model of the project, I’d like to see some concrete plans and sketches for the interiors for the first phase of the apartments as soon as possible,’ Jay told Keira crisply as he drove them back down the dusty untarmacked road.

He had removed his sunglasses now that they were no longer driving into the sun, but the light was still too bright for Keira to want to remove her own.

‘I’m leaving for Mumbai tomorrow evening, which will give you just over twenty-four hours to come up with an overview for me before I leave.’

The speed at which he expected her to work was shocking.

‘I can’t possibly produce detailed interior plans in twenty-four hours,’ Keira protested, her face burning slightly as she sensed from the sideways look he slashed towards her that he was taking her words as an admission of failure rather than as an honest professional assessment of what could be accomplished in such a limited time span. Well, she wasn’t going to recall or deny them. Her chin lifted, and the look she returned to him said without words that she wasn’t going to recant—or apologise.

Keira could almost feel his mind probing her silence and assessing it. Her chin tilted a bit higher, but she wasn’t going to risk looking directly into those platinum-grey eyes. Just thinking about the power of their uncompromisingly analytical surveillance made her feel far too weak. Platinum. One of the most desired and valuable metals in today’s world. Somehow the colour of his eyes was symbolic of the man himself.

‘Overviews, I said—not detailed plans,’ Jay informed her coolly. ‘Themes, colours, some take on style, so that I can mull them over whilst I’m travelling.’

‘I haven’t got my samples with me, or a proper office, or...’

‘You’ll be staying in the guest wing of the palace whilst you’re working on this project. I’ve already arranged for the hotel to shift your stuff over to it, so it should be waiting for you when we get back. The accommodation provided for you includes an office.’

As easily as the first Mughal warriors had taken possession of the land, he had cut the ground from beneath her feet.

Oblivious to the bombshell he had just dropped on her, Jay continued briskly, ‘You’ll find it much more convenient, being in the city, and I’ll supply you with a driver so that you can go out to the site if you need to whilst I’m in Mumbai. As for your samples—I thought I’d already made it clear that I expect you to use locally sourced materials. I’ll take you down to the bazaar once I’ve shown you the scale model of the site, and introduce you to some of the suppliers I’ve already sourced.’

‘Are you sure that you
want
a designer?’ The thought of having to share a living space with him had upset her so much that Keira was in a headlong flight that redirected her fear into sarcasm. ‘It seems to me that what you really want is someone who says yes to everything you say.’

‘Isn’t that what all women secretly want?’ Jay taunted her softly. ‘A man who can tame her creativity to fit his own desires and tells her so? You modern women may deny it, but none of us can go against nature. Isn’t it true that secretly you prefer a man to know himself and his desires so that he can use them to become a truly creative and imaginative lover, who can take you to a place where every fantasy you’ve ever had can be fulfilled? Be honest and admit that it’s true. A woman of your age living in these modern times must know that truth—unless, of course, you are still waiting for a man with whom you can experience that degree of pleasure.’

How was it possible for her to feel so hot and so cold at the same time, with her stomach churning with shocked fear and her head dizzy with even more shocked excitement?

‘Nothing to say? Perhaps, then, the lovers you’ve experienced in the past weren’t as satisfying as they might have been?’

What was going on? How had the conversation managed to go from a businesslike discussion of Jay’s requirements to this? However it had happened, it certainly wasn’t kindly intentioned, Keira suspected.

She took a deep breath and told him calmly, ‘I don’t think that this kind of conversation is appropriate, given our business relationship.’

She was doing it again. Jay could feel the heat of mingled anger and arousal beating up inside his body, threatening his self-control. He had no idea what it was about this woman that pushed against the boundaries of that control and threatened it so dramatically and with such speed, but he couldn’t deny any more that there was something about her that did. It acted on him like a goad—irritating, driving, inciting, making him burn with a need to make her want him as much as he did her, to make her admit that want and cry it out to him. Only then could his pride be salved. Only her pleas for his possession and her cries of pleasure could satisfy it. And him?

‘Not given our business relationship,’ he agreed. ‘But what about
this
relationship?’

As he finished speaking he took his hand off the steering wheel, reached out slowly, and very deliberately rubbed his thumb across Keira’s nipple.

The shock of his touch was like an electric charge shooting through her. Her body, already sensitised to him from their earlier intimacy, reacted with the immediacy of a monsoon downpour, drenching her with aching need.

One look at her blatantly aroused expression had Jay stopping the four-by-four abruptly in the middle of the dusty empty road. It was almost midday, and there was no escape for anyone foolish enough to be caught in the sun’s heat as it scorched the scrubby patches of dried-out grass. In the distance Keira could see trees that would provide shade and protection from the heat. But, like the grass, she was exposed by her own foolishness, and there was no protection for her unless she herself created it. She could feel the heat pressing in on the four-by-four as though trying to possess and overwhelm its artificial air-conditioned coolness. Safety and security were such fragile things when they were opposed by the forces of nature. But they still had to be fought and an effort made to control them.

Her breasts ached heavily, her nipples hard with longing for what they couldn’t have.

‘That isn’t a relationship,’ she told Jay flatly. ‘It’s...it’s...’

‘Desire...need...hunger...’

Keira could feel her control being stolen from her.

‘It’s nothing,’ she corrected him.

‘Nothing? Are you sure?’

‘You’ve hired me as an interior designer. That is the only relationship I want there to be between us.’

Keira held her breath, waiting for him to call her a liar.

‘Your body tells a different story. No doubt because it is well trained to react to my sex in a way that flatters it.’

He was being brutally insulting, but Keira wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing that he had upset her. Instead she told him coolly, ‘It’s amazing how often what we think we recognise in other people is merely what we have already decided we
want
to recognise.’

The look he gave her made her heart thud and then race with the fear of the hunted for the hunter. Within seconds she knew why.

‘Are you saying that the telltale hardness of your nipples was caused specifically by me and for me?’

His challenge had caught her in a trap of her own making, and there was nothing she could do now other than look straight ahead and tell him in a betrayingly constricted voice, ‘I think we should change the subject.’

This was a new variation on an old game, Jay acknowledged, and it was certainly an unexpectedly excitingly erotic one. She was good. She was very good. She could turn him from pride to anger, and from that to sexual heat and desire, all within the space of a few minutes and a handful of words. If she was as good in bed...

* * *

Half an hour later the four-by-four was parked in the city car park and they were being welcomed back into the very grand entrance hall Keira remembered from the previous day.

The scale model of the new city and its planned surrounding development was displayed on a large table under glass in an otherwise almost empty room, down the corridor and past Jay’s office.

A man who had the ambition and the wealth to underwrite this kind of project had to have a determined and even a ruthless side to his nature, Keira acknowledged. He would certainly make a very formidable opponent, and one who would never willingly accept defeat or being denied something he wanted.

Without any orders seeming to be given, a houseboy had appeared with tea, and Keira drank the hot reviving liquid gratefully.

‘We’ll eat in the old town whilst we’re out,’ Jay told her. ‘There are several good restaurants there. Meanwhile, if you want to freshen up, Kunal here will show you to your quarters.’ He raised his wrist to look at his watch, and unwittingly Keira looked too.

His forearm was firmly muscled, its olive skin darkened with body hair. A feeling that was a volatile mix of weakness and heat flipped her heart against her ribs and tightened her lower stomach muscles. What was happening to her? How could just looking at a man’s wrist do something like this to her? Have her imagining him pinning her down against the softness of a voile-curtained bed with the weight of that arm over her naked body?

‘I’ve got a couple of phone calls to make, so I’ll meet you downstairs in half an hour.’

Keira was glad that all she needed to do was nod her head and then turn to follow the houseboy, because she simply didn’t trust herself to speak.

The guest wing must originally have been the women’s quarters of the palace, Keira guessed. It had its own enclosed courtyard garden, complete with a fountain and a pool which she could see and hear through the open arched windows from the enormous bedroom Kunal had shown her to.

‘You like?’ Kunal asked her shyly. ‘This palace was built many many years ago by the Maharaja. Ralapur has many palaces—all very beautiful.’

‘Ralapur reminds me of Jaipur,’ Keira told him.

‘No,’ Kunal told her vehemently, immediately shaking his head. ‘Ralapur is better than Jaipur. Much better.’ He was laughing now, inviting her to share in his joke and his loyalty to his home.

Keira waited until Kunal had gone before exploring her new quarters. The bedroom had a hugely ornate French empire-style bed, which looked as though it had been built and decorated specifically for the room, and the bathroom, reached via a door to one side of the bed was virtually the same size as the whole of her open-plan living space in her London apartment, decadently opulent with a sunken bath and mirrored walls.

These rooms had been created for a sexually active and sensual woman, Keira decided—a woman who had been a courtesan, surely, rather than a consort? Was that why he had given her this suite? As a reminder of what he considered her to be?

She washed and changed quickly into a cotton top with short sleeves and a softly pleated skirt, and then made her way back along the corridor and down the stairs to the hallway, where Jay was standing waiting for her.

* * *

‘I thought we would eat here,’ Jay announced, indicating the fretted arched doorway of a restaurant just off the city’s main street.

‘They serve traditional local food, and I should warn you that it is quite spicy. If you would prefer to eat somewhere else...?’

Keira hadn’t thought that she was hungry, but just the smell of food wafting through the door was enough to make her mouth water.

‘No—here is fine,’ she assured him.

The restaurant was busy, with waiters wearing brightly coloured traditional clothes and intricately folded turbans that gave them a fierce warrior-like air, and diners seated on large cushions on the floor around low-level tables.

Everyone turned to look at Jay, no doubt because of his status as a member of the royal family. The waiters bowed low to him, and the restaurant owner, who was dressed in a European business suit, came hurrying forward to welcome them, offering them a higher table with chairs when he saw Keira.

But Keira shook her head. ‘Unless, of course, you would prefer that?’ she asked Jay.

His dismissive shrug said that it wasn’t a matter of any great concern to him how they sat, and he certainly had no trouble whatsoever adopting the traditional almost yoga-type pose she had assumed herself, with her legs and feet covered by her skirt.

‘We serve traditional smoked
sule kebas
here,’ the owner informed her, ‘and the vegetarian food of the Maheshwari of the Marwaris. But if I may, I would recommend our
dal baati,
which is a house speciality.’

‘Yes, please,’ Keira accepted with a smile.

She was certainly at ease with traditional Indian customs and food, Jay acknowledged, as he watched Keira eating her meal with obvious enjoyment.

The shops were just reopening after the heat of the day when they stepped back out into the wide tree-shaded avenue, just over an hour later.

Jay explained to her that the water supply came from artesian wells deep down in the earth, below the rocky plateau on which the city was built and that the seventeenth-century poet prince who had created the city had had underground storage systems built to provide water not just for his palace and his city but also for his gardens.

Listening to Jay, Keira could hear in his voice the pride in his ancestor. Their backgrounds were so very different. He could take pride in his parents and his upbringing, where all she could feel was shame. He was the son of a Maharaja; she was the daughter of a prostitute and a drug addict. He was a man and she was a woman, and when he touched her. But, no—she must not think like that.

Children in uniform were filing out of their school, walking together in pairs in a sedate crocodile.

‘My brother has instituted several reforms since he came to power,’ Jay told Keira as they watched the children. ‘One of which is to ensure that every child receives a good education. He says it’s the best investment there can be, as these children will be the future not just of our city but of India itself.’

They had reached the entrance to the bazaar and Keira stood still, its sights and scents enveloping her. Bright silks hung in the doorway of one shop, whilst intricately hand-beaten metalware lay heaped on the pavement outside another. A jeweller was throwing back his shutters to reveal the brightness of his gold to the late-afternoon sunshine. From inside a herbalist’s shop the pungent smell of his goods drifted out into the heat.