The Talk of Hollywood (12 page)

Mainly because her grandfather’s telephone call had revealed that he had rushed up to London two days ago,
and security here had been increased, because he and some members of one of his previous security teams had been receiving threats. That threat had somehow escalated in the past twenty-four hours, and now her grandfather expected—instructed—that she just calmly sit here at Bromley House and await further news!

No way. Absolutely no way was Stazy going to just sit here waiting to see if someone succeeded in attacking her grandfather.

She turned to look at Little as he quietly entered the study with a silver tray containing a decanter of brandy and two glasses. ‘I suppose
you
already knew what was going on before we spoke to my grandfather?’

‘Stazy,’ Jaxon reproved softly from where he sat in the chair facing her grandfather’s desk.

‘I’m sorry, Little.’ Stazy sighed. ‘Did you happen to know about these threats to my grandfather?’ she asked, less challengingly but just as determinedly, as she watched the butler carefully and precisely place the decanter and glasses on the desktop.

Again Jaxon was sure that he hadn’t imagined the butler’s reaction—a slight but nevertheless revealing tic in his cheek—before the other man covered his emotion with his usual noncommittal expression as he answered Stazy. ‘I believe the increased security measures here are only a precaution, Miss Stazy.’

‘I’m not concerned about myself—’

‘That will be all, thank you, Little.’ Jaxon gave the older man a reassuring smile as he stood up to cross the room and usher the butler out into the hallway before closing the door firmly behind him. ‘Taking out your worry concerning your grandfather on one of the people who works for him isn’t going to make you feel
any better, Stazy.’ He spoke mildly as he moved to the front of the desk to pour brandy into the two glasses.

‘Is it too much to expect you to understand how worried I feel?’ A nerve pulsed in her tightly clenched jaw, and her cheeks were once again pale, her eyes suspiciously over-bright.

With anger or tears, Jaxon wasn’t sure.

He straightened slowly to hand her one of the glasses of deep amber liquid. ‘No, of course it isn’t. I just don’t believe insulting Little or me is going to help the situation.’

‘Then what is?’ She threw the contents of the glass to the back of her throat before moving to refill it.

Jaxon winced. ‘Expensive brandies like this one are meant to be breathed in, sipped and then savoured—not thrown down like a pint of unimpressive warm beer!’

‘I know that.’ She picked up the second glass and took a healthy swallow of the contents of that one too, before slamming it back down on the desk to look up challengingly at Jaxon.

‘Stazy, I really wouldn’t advise you pushing this situation to a point where I have to use extreme measures in order to calm you down,’ Jaxon said softly as he saw the reckless glint in her eyes had deepened.

‘Such as what?’ she prompted warily. ‘Are you going to put me over your knee and spank me for being naughty? Or will just slapping me on the cheek suffice?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m not about to slap you anywhere—but the first suggestion has a certain merit at this moment!’ Ordinarily Jaxon wouldn’t dream of using physical force of any kind on a woman. But this situation was far from ordinary. Stazy was way out of her normally controlled zone. Almost to the point of
hysteria. Rightly so, of course, when her grandfather was all the family she had left in the world.

In these unusual circumstances Jaxon didn’t at all mind being used as Stazy’s verbal punchbag, but he knew her well enough to know that she would be mortified at her treatment of the obviously devoted Little once she had calmed down enough to recognise how she had spoken to him just now—out of love and worry for her grandfather or otherwise.

The uncharacteristic tears glistening in those eyes were his undoing. ‘Oh, Stazy …!’ he groaned, even as he took her gently into his arms. ‘It’s going to be okay—you’ll see.’

‘You don’t really know that,’ she murmured against his chest as she choked back those tears.

‘No, I don’t,’ Jaxon answered honestly. ‘But what I do know is that Geoffrey is a man who knows exactly what he’s doing. If he says this problem is going to be handled, then I have no doubt that it will be. And, as you know him much better than I do, you shouldn’t either,’ he encouraged softly as he ran comforting hands up and down the length of her back.

‘You’re right. I know you are.’ She nodded against him. ‘I just—I can’t help feeling worried.’

‘I know that.’ Jaxon’s arms tightened about her as the softness of her body rested against the length of his. ‘And so does Geoffrey. Which is why he asked me to take care of you.’

She raised her head to look at him, her smile still tearful. ‘And this is you taking care of me …?’

‘I could possibly do a better job of it if I thought you wouldn’t object …?’

Stazy groaned low in her throat as Jaxon slowly lowered his head and slanted his mouth lightly against hers,
her body instantly relaxing into his and her fingers becoming entangled in his hair as her lips parted to deepen that kiss.

It felt as if Stazy had been waiting for this to happen since the last time Jaxon had kissed her. Waiting and longing for it. Instantly she became lost to the pleasure of those exploring lips and the caress of Jaxon’s hands as they roamed her back before cupping her bottom and pulling her into him.

She was achingly aware of every inch of the lean length of Jaxon’s body against hers—his chest hard and unyielding against the fullness of her breasts, the hardness of his erection caught between her stomach and thighs, living evidence of his own rapidly escalating arousal.

Stazy gave another groan as Jaxon’s hands tightened about her bottom and he lifted her up and placed her on the edge of the desk. His knees nudged her legs apart, pushing her dress up to her thighs as he stepped between them, and she felt the heat of his erection against the lace of her panties. That groan turned into a low moan of heated pleasure as he pressed into her, applying just the right amount of pressure.

Her neck arched and her fingers clung to the broad width of Jaxon’s shoulders when his lips left hers to kiss across her cheek before travelling the length of her throat—kissing, gently biting, as he tasted her creamy skin before his tongue plundered and rasped the sensitive hollows at the base of her neck.

Her back arched as Jaxon’s hand moved to cup beneath one of her breasts. The soft material of her dress was no barrier to the pleasure that coursed through her hotly as his thumb moved lightly across the roused and aching nipple, and she was only vaguely aware of it
when his other hand slowly lowered the zip of her dress down the length of her spine before his hand touched the naked flesh beneath, revealing that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

Jaxon heard the voice in his head telling him to stop this now. Offering Stazy comfort was one thing—what he wanted was something else entirely. He heard that voice and ignored it—had no choice but to ignore it when he could feel how Stazy’s pleasure more than matched his own.

He reached up to ease the dress down her arms, baring her to the waist before he moved his hands to cup beneath the swell of her breasts. Such full and heavy breasts, when the rest of her body was so slender. Full and heavy breasts that Jaxon wanted in his mouth as he tasted and pleasured her.

His hands remained firmly on her waist and he moved back slightly to look down at her nakedness. The heat of his gaze on those uptilting breasts tipped by rosy pink and engorged nipples stayed for long, admiring seconds before he lowered his head to take one in his mouth.

Stazy moved her arms so that her hands were flat on the desk behind her, supporting her as the pleasure of having Jaxon’s mouth and tongue on her coursed hotly from her breasts to between her thighs. She felt herself tingle there as he took her nipple fully into the heat of his mouth and began to suckle, gently at first, and then more greedily, as his hand cupped her other breast and began to caress her in that same sensuous rhythm.

She was on fire, the ache between her thighs almost unbearable now, building higher and higher, until she knew Jaxon held her poised on the edge of release. ‘Please, Jaxon …!’ she groaned weakly.

He ignored that plea and instead turned the attentions of his lips, tongue and teeth to her other breast. His lips clamped about the fullness of the nipple as his tongue and teeth licked and rasped against that sensitive bud, driving Stazy wild as she moved her thighs restlessly against his in an effort to ease her aching need for the release that was just a whisper of pleasure away.

She trembled all over with that need, her breath a pained rasp in her throat as she looked down at Jaxon with hot and heavy eyes. Just the sight of his lips clamped about her, drawing her nipple deeper and deeper into his mouth with each greedy suck, caused another rush of heat between her restless and throbbing thighs.

‘Jaxon …!’ Instead of deepening that pleasure, as she so wanted him to do, it seemed as if Jaxon began to ease away from her, gently kissing her breasts now, his hands once again a soft caress against her back. ‘Stop playing with me, please, Jaxon!’ she pleaded throatily.

‘This isn’t a sensible idea, Stazy,’ he groaned achingly, even as his arms dropped from about her waist before he straightened away from her.

Stazy looked at him searchingly for several long seconds, easily seeing the regret in his eyes before a shutter came down over those twin mirrors into his emotions. ‘Jaxon …?’ she breathed softly.

He gave a shake of his head, his expression grim. ‘We both know that you’re going to end up hating me if I take this any further …’

‘You’re wrong, Jaxon.’ She gave a disbelieving shake of her head, continuing to stare up at him dazedly as she pulled her dress back up her arms to hold it in front of the bareness of her breasts with one hand while she
pulled the material down over her naked thighs with the other.

‘I am?’ he prompted huskily.

‘Oh, yes,’ Stazy breathed softly. ‘Because I couldn’t possibly hate you any more than I do at this moment!’ Her eyes glittered with humiliated anger now, rather than tears.

Jaxon knew he fully deserved that anger—that he had allowed things to go much further between them just now than was wise when Stazy was already feeling so emotionally vulnerable. But he also knew that Stazy was wrong—she would definitely have hated him more if they had taken their lovemaking to its inevitable conclusion. And on the plus side—for Geoffrey and Little, that was!—Stazy was now far more angry with him than she had been earlier with either of them!

That, in retrospect, was probably the best outcome. He was scheduled to leave here at the end of the week, whereas Geoffrey and Little would both be around for much longer than that.

Jaxon kept his expression noncommittal as he stepped fully away from Stazy, his shaft throbbing in protest as he did so. No doubt another cold shower—a very
long
cold shower!—would be in order when he got back to his suite of rooms. ‘There’s the possibility you might even thank me for my restraint in the morning …’ he murmured ruefully.

‘I shouldn’t hold your breath on that happening, if I were you!’

‘Stazy—’

‘I think you should leave now, Jaxon.’ It was definitely anger that now sparkled in her eyes.

‘Fine,’ he accepted wearily. ‘But you know where I am if you can’t sleep and feel like—’

‘Like what?’ she cut in sharply. ‘I thought we had both just agreed that this was a very bad idea?’

‘I was going to say if you feel like company,’ Jaxon completed firmly. ‘And I don’t remembering saying it was a bad idea—just not a very sensible one, given the circumstances.’

‘Well, “given the circumstances”, I would now like you to leave.’ Her chin rose proudly as she held his gaze.

Jaxon gave her one last regretful glance before doing exactly that, knowing that to stay would only make the situation worse.

If that was actually possible.

‘T
HAT
really wasn’t very clever, now, was it?’ Jaxon looked at Stazy impatiently as he entered the drawing room almost two hours later, to see her pacing in front of the bay windows, now dressed in a thick green sweater and fitted black denims, with her red-gold hair neatly plaited down the length of her spine.

She shot him only a cursory glance as she continued to pace restlessly. ‘Shouldn’t you be fast asleep?’

He closed the door softly behind him. ‘Little came and knocked on my bedroom door. He seemed to think I might like to know that you had tried to take my Harley in an attempt to go and see your grandfather tonight.’

‘The traitor …’

Jaxon gave a rueful shake of his shaggy head, having quickly pulled on faded denims and a black tee shirt before coming downstairs. ‘Exactly when did you take the keys to the Harley off my dressing table …?’

‘When I heard the shower running in your bathroom.’ She had the grace to look a little guilty. ‘I am sorry I took them without your permission, but at the time I didn’t feel I had any other choice.’

‘Is that your idea of an apology?’

‘No.’ She sighed. ‘It was very wrong of me, and I do
apologise, Jaxon. My grandfather would be horrified if he knew!’

‘I’m horrified—but probably not for the same reason!’ Jaxon gave her an exasperated glance as he too easily imagined what might have happened if she had managed to ride the Harley. ‘How could you even have
thought
taking my motorbike was going to work, Stazy, when there are enough guards patrolling the grounds for them to hear a mouse squeak let alone the roar of an engine starting up?’

‘I didn’t even get the bike out of the garage,’ Stazy acknowledged self-disgustedly.

There had been no excuse for what she had allowed to happen in her grandfather’s study earlier that evening, and just thinking about those intimacies once Stazy reached the privacy of her bedroom had been enough to make her want to get as far away from Bromley House—and Jaxon—as possible!

Admittedly it had taken a little time on her part, but once it had occurred to her that she could ‘borrow’ the keys to Jaxon’s Harley and then take the less used and hopefully less guarded back road out of the estate to leave, she hadn’t been able to rid herself of the idea.