Satin Dreams (17 page)

He leaned toward her, banging both hands on the table. “My God, how can you deny me? That’s what you’re here for! Do you think,” he growled, “I’ve been able to forget you? Get you out of my head? You’re driving me crazy!”
 

Alix backed away. “You can’t do this to me, even in France!” When he started around the table, she retreated through l’Escargot’s dining room, followed by their anxious waiter. “If you don’t stop threatening me,” she cried, “I’m going to report you to the police!”
 

“Go ahead,” he shouted over the heads of three ladies being escorted to their table. “I have many friends in the
Surete.
”
 

With a muffled scream, Alix turned and ran through l’Escargot’s Second Empire splendors, zigzagging among the tables. Nicholas Palliades was close behind her as she made it through the front door. He caught her on the sidewalk and held her, shouting for the doorman to signal for his chauffeur and the car.
 

“Is this how you deal with everything, by running away?” He locked his hands behind her back and held her as she tried to kick him. The Daimler rolled to a stop in front of them. “First the other night in my apartment, now in a public restaurant. I look up and you’re running away from me again!” He jerked open the rear door without waiting for the chauffeur. “You see, you’ve made me lose my temper,” he snarled.
 

Alix stumbled and went down on one knee, bracing her hand against the side of the limousine. The lunchtime crowd in Les Halle began to gather in front of l’Escargot Montorgueil to watch.
 

“
Aidez-moi,
” Nicholas snapped at the restaurant doorman. Between them they dragged Alix back to her feet. The cold wind whipped her long red hair in their faces.
 

“How can you act like this?” Nicholas said angrily. More passersby stopped, entranced. “Stop fighting me, you stupid girl. I only want to make love to you!”
 

“
Il est fou,
” Alix tried to appeal to their audience. “
Vraiment!
”
 

The onlookers were only mildly interested. Even if Nicholas Palliades were a certifiable lunatic, Alix saw, she wasn’t going to get any help from Parisians. They thought it was a lovers’ quarrel.
 

She couldn’t fight both the l’Escargot doorman and Nicholas; in spite of her struggles, they shoved her unceremoniously inside the car. Nicholas jumped in after her, and tripped over her legs. They came down together in a tangle on the limousine’s back seat.
 

The l’Escargot doorman slammed the door shut, and the crowd on the sidewalk watched as the Daimler shifted into gear and pulled swiftly away from the curb. No one had moved. Some spectators were even smiling.
 

This, after all, was Paris.
 

The Daimler careened into the rue de Rivoli at twice its usual speed. Alix had fallen half-off the back seat; only Nicholas Palliades’s big body kept her from sliding to the floor.
 

“You’re kidnapping me,” she screamed, trying to pry him off with both hands. “You’re going to rape me!”
 

“My God, don’t say that, somebody will hear you!” Nicholas levered himself up, but as the Daimler swerved again he lost his balance. His muscular length fell down on top of Alix as the big car took a curve into the Tuileries, tires squealing.
 

With an oath, Nicholas reached out and grabbed the telephone to the chauffeur. “Slow down, you idiot,” he shouted in English. “Are you trying to get us killed?”
 

He slammed the phone back in its cradle. Alix lay with her scarf awry under him, her hair fanned out in a red halo against the gray velvet of the limousine’s seat. Her ski jacket had come open, showing the quick rise and fall of her breasts under her sweater. Her purple eyes, dark as wood violets, looked up at him not with fear, but with caution.
 

He forgot what he was going to say as he stared down at her. Still sprawled against her, he felt the imprint of her body and legs burning through his clothing.
 

“Why do you keep making these scenes?” He was baffled, by this exotically beautiful woman in his arms who was so exasperatingly elusive. “You know I detest them.”
 

Alix stared up at Nicholas’s hard, chiseled face. “
I
keep making scenes?” She tried to push at him. “You chased me out of the restaurant! And then you dragged me into this car! I don’t care how much money you’re giving Jackson Storm, I’m not going to let you manhandle me!”
 

He found it difficult to pay attention to what she was saying as he watched the perfect white gleam of her teeth, the pink, glossy curve of her lips. “Yes,” he murmured. “The Maison Louvel will pay you more money than Mortessier’s. I told them to.”
 

She stopped struggling.
 

“You told them to do
what?
” The purple glimmer of her eyes grew wide.
 

Nicholas couldn’t resist. He lowered his head and brushed his mouth against the alluring little throb of pulse under the white skin of her throat. When she stiffened under him with a gasp, his body responded wildly. It was all he could do to say, “You’re going to tell me who you’re working for. And what the other night, in my apartment, was all about.” Her warm pulse, his lips told him as he nuzzled her, was racing. “But I don’t intend to starve you.”
 

Her breath shuddered again, warm against his face. Her eyes, purple lakes heavily fringed with mascara, looked bemused. She couldn’t be as innocent as she seemed, he told himself. She was well-trained, that was all.
 

“I—I can always leave the Maison Louvel.” The warm lips nibbling the lobe of her ear made Alix breathless. “I’m not going to be in anyone’s power!”
 

Nicholas was on fire. His mouth touched hers softly, then stopped as he felt the unconscious quiver run through her again. Her responsiveness tore at him. It also made it hard for him to think clearly. The car had slowed; it was easy to slide his hand under her and lift her, soft, warm, and unresisting against him. Even as he cursed himself for wanting her. Even as he cursed the insistent ache of his arousal which he knew she could feel through their clothes.
 

He was surprised at how much she affected him. This girl, just a struggling couture-house model, had been bought; she was part of a dangerous plot, he would bet his life on it. But he couldn’t respond to the rational part of himself that begged him to stop. Against her sweet, partly opened mouth, he murmured thickly, “Why do you resist me?”
 

With a throaty moan Alix opened her body to him, thighs relaxing against his tense, pressing frame. Instinctively, she lifted her arms and curled them around his neck, captured by some faint memory of what it had been like that night in his apartment. In the beginning his lovemaking had been heavy, sensuous, mesmerizing; trying to retrieve it, she let her mouth cling to his.
 

The effect on him was electric. He pushed her back against the plush seat in an abrupt convulsion of need. For the first time, she realized how much stronger he was. She stared up into his face, dark with passion, thick lashes cloaking his eyes. “Don’t,” she moaned.
 

“Yes, oh, yes.” He breathed the words against her lips. “I want to make love to you. Why would I want to hurt you?” His kiss trailed across her throat. “Why would I want to do anything but make this perfect for you?”
 

The Daimler had come to a stop. Winter sunshine streamed brightly in through the tinted window glass. Her ski jacket was open, and Nicholas’s strong, heavy fingers were under her sweater, her thrusting breasts filling his palm, nipple budded tightly under the stroking of his thumb. Alix drifted in a heated dream, her hips molded against the rigid feel of his sex.
 

“You bewitch me,” he was saying softly. “You have to leave these people, stop whatever it is you’re doing, it’s not worth it. This is a dangerous game. You’re not carrying a gun, are you?”
 

She looked at him from under half-closed lids, mesmerized by his passion, his tenderness. “Did you say a gun?”
 

“Never mind.” He kissed her again, his tongue exploring her mouth gently, then he pulled back. He slipped his hand between them into his jacket’s inner breast pocket. “God, how I want you,” he muttered as he kissed her again.
 

Nicholas’s kisses left Alix dreamily helpless. When she opened her eyes and looked over his shoulder, she saw they were parked in the street in front of the Maison Louvel.
 

Not, she realized quickly, at his town house in the avenue Foch.
 

He felt her stiffen. He drew back a few inches, looking down at her with glowing black eyes. “Yes, I want you—today, this afternoon. But I can’t force you. I’ve brought you back to the Maison Louvel.” He held up what he’d taken from his inside pocket. The sunlight through the Daimler’s window struck sparks of fire. “I had them reset with bigger stones,” Nicholas Palliades said huskily.
 

Alix’s senses had been lulled by sheer animal sensuousness. Now she stared, disbelievingly, at the awful earrings dangling before her. Whatever else he offered, Nicholas Palliades was still just as crass, as single-mindedly unacceptable as he’d been the first moment she’d seen him. How had she managed to let herself feel otherwise?
 

“I don’t want your cheap diamonds!” She struggled to sit up. “I don’t want to be treated like a
tart.
” She fumbled for the Daimler’s door lock. “This isn’t a plot. You don’t have to buy me off. Just leave me alone!”
 

“What’s wrong with them?” He hadn’t moved. “What the hell do you mean, ‘cheap diamonds’?”
 

Alix was disgusted with herself for allowing him to maul her in the back seat of the limousine. “You don’t understand,” she cried. “I don’t want to be involved with you. This—this was never supposed to happen!”
 

There was a click as the lock was released, and the limousine’s door came open. Alix stumbled out into the rue des Benedictines.
 

She started toward the medieval doors that led to the tunnel and the entrance of the Maison Louvel. He followed her, the diamond pendants still swinging from his thumb and forefinger.
 

“Are you telling me these are not good enough?” He caught her with the other hand and spun her about. “Answer me! What the hell do you mean by ‘cheap’?”
 

“
Cheap,
” Alix cried, trying to break out of his grip. “You wouldn’t know what cheap is. But I’m worth more than that!”
 

“Oh, are you?” His voice was now ominously soft. “Finally we get to the truth. What was the price of the other night? I mean your little virginal roll in the hay. You’ve never told me.”
 

She jerked back her arm, but he wouldn’t let her go.
 

“I’ll tell you,” he said, his lips drawn back to reveal straight, white teeth. “I bought your innocent body. That makes you mine. As of now, you’re not working for anybody else, reporting to anybody else. You’re no longer part of their strategy. If you don’t believe that,” he said, his face menacing, “try to get another job in Paris. Try to live where you are, in your little flat in Ranelagh, and see if they will let you stay there. Try to go back to Mortessier’s and see how he welcomes you.”
 

“You bastard,” Alix breathed. He was rich, and powerful; she knew he could do all of it.
 

“You belong to me,” he rasped, clamping her arm. “More than you know. You don’t have to accept ‘cheap diamonds.’ If I want to, I can have you without giving you a goddamned thing!”
 

They were unaware of a figure approaching from the Maison Louvel courtyard, where cars were parked.
 

“You’re hurting my arm!” Alix twisted in his grip. “I’m not making another scene now—
you
are!”
 

As he jerked her to him roughly, a voice said, “Hey, I think the lady wants you to let her go.”
 

Alix knew what was coming the moment she heard Christopher Forbes’s voice. The writer, bareheaded and without a coat, stepped between them. “She wants you to let her go,” he said again.
 

Nicholas Palliades hardly looked at him. “Stay out of this. It’s none of your business.”
 

There was a blur of motion, and Alix heard the distinct sound of flesh hitting flesh. Nicholas staggered back. The burly writer moved in swiftly, but before he could land another punch, the taller man uncoiled a karate blow. She heard a cry of pain.
 

They had made enough noise to be heard inside the Maison Louvel. Abdul came running out from the courtyard. Palliades’s chauffeur had already leaped out of the limousine. He threw himself on Nicholas and backed him against the Daimler, both men shouting at each other angrily.
 

Abdul’s son Karim ran up to see if his father needed help. Alix put her hands over her face. Oh, God, all they needed right now was Jackson Storm!