A Sudden Engagement and The Sicilian’s Surprise Wife(13)

His cynicism stunned her. With one breath he was more or less admitting that he loved Beverley and would do anything to get her back, and yet with another he was coldbloodedly talking about making love to her! No, not ‘making love’, Kirsty amended, shuddering, but punishing, and her tender flesh quivered at the thought of Drew’s hard male lips tormenting her vulnerable body, imposing on her a surrender that would stay with her for the rest of her life.

‘You couldn’t! The fateful words were spoken with a depth of confidence she was far from feeling, but pride insisted that she say them. To resist would be a tacit admission of defeat, an acceptance of his contention that he could bend her to his will.

He moved with a speed that frightened her into ignominiously turning on her heel to flee. It was a repeat of those moments in his suite all over again, and if she had had the slightest atom of sense she would have hesitated before throwing down that challenge, but it had always been her way to act first and then worry about the consequences later. That was the whole trouble, she thought feverishly as Drew’s fingers tightened into the soft flesh of her upper arm.

‘You can’t do this,’ she moaned softly, not even trying to hide her fear. For a moment she thought he meant to ignore her, but then his hands fell away, his expression uncompromisingly harsh as he walked her back to the settee and pushed her down into it, taking a seat adjacent to her, but leaving a comfortable distance between them.

‘Perhaps now you’ll realise it isn’t always wise to challenge a man to prove he’s exactly that,’ he told her bluntly, ‘but despite that over-excited imagination of yours, Kirsty, the reason I brought you here was simply to talk through wh, t happened tonight. Our engagement stands. I hadn’t realised you knew how I felt.’ His mouth compressed. ‘I must admit it makes things harder—for both of us, especially since I’ve promised to take over directing Much Ado from Simon—he wants to be able to spend a little more time with Helen and Nicky. He also wants to take them on holiday this year, so you and I are going to have to work together—another reason for announcing our engagement, if you really need another. With that fertile imagination of yours, you shouldn’t have much trouble accepting that if I hadn’t, Much Ado would have come a poor second to the attention and speculation given to our relationship—and after what Beverley said it’s no use insisting that there isn’t one—you wouldn’t convince a single soul.’

‘But you had no need to compound matters by saying we were engaged,’ Kirsty flung at him. ‘It’s so outdated!’ she shrugged petulantly. ‘People don’t bother with such formalities these days.’

The flash of anger in his eyes surprised her into silence.

‘Meaning exactly what?’ he asked coldly, ‘that you’d have preferred me to announce that we were live-in lovers? It wouldn’t work, Kirsty, and it would have meant you coming to live here with me, to be convincing. At least the conventionality of an engagement offers us both some measure of protection. Besides,’ he added curtly, ‘as a disciple of modern morals you don’t put forward a very convincing case—you’re still a virgin,’ he reminded her, ‘and something tells me that when you fall in love you’re going to want permanency and commitment from your lover. What’s the matter?’ he goaded her when she fell silent. ‘Lost for words for once?’

It wasn’t that, it was simply that she was acknowledging that he was right; she would want both those things, and love as well, but what had astounded her was that Drew had known. And what was that he had said about taking over from Simon? She stared at him, her heart thudding uncomfortably.

‘You’re not really taking over from Simon, are you?’ she asked him huskily.‘Because if you are.…’

‘You’ll break your contract? No dice, Kirsty. Surely you haven’t forgotten the effect leaving here now would have on your career, even if it was possible—which it isn’t. Two flops behind you,’ he reminded her cruelly, ‘and then you turn down Hero? No company worth bothering with would look at you.’

Kirsty knew it was all too painfully true.

‘If you really want to make it as an actress you’ll put aside personal dislikes and pride, and concentrate simply on getting the most you can from the role. I still believe you can bring an important freshness to Hero, and Simon agrees with me.’

‘I don’t know if I can work with you,’ Kirsty told him honestly, appalled by the sudden explosion of anger in his eyes.

‘Do you think it will be easy for me?’ he blazed at her. ‘God, what a child you are! And let’s not pretend that I couldn’t undermine those defences of yours very easily, Kirsty—very easily indeed. And don’t start telling me again that I’d have to force you. It wouldn’t take much. This, for instance.…’

He moved before she could stop him, crossing the space that divided them, his body pressing her back against the soft cushions, his tongue trailing enticingly along the vulnerable curve of her throat. Weakness invaded her, the terrible shattering knowledge that he was right, and that her body responded passionately to him, no matter how much she willed it not to, something she could no longer deny.

‘You see?’ Drew mocked softly. His hands cupped her shoulders, warm fingers probing the narrow straps of her dress as he bent his head again, intent on further destruction of her willpower. Kirsty quivered tensely beneath the expert assault of his mouth, moving lazily over skin that seemed to possess a thousand receptive nerve endings, each one relaying to her brain the delirious pleasure his touch invoked. His teeth caught her earlobe, teasing it gently. It was like drowning, Kirsty thought numbly; like going down for the third time and not caring about anything except the sensually fatal embrace of a danger that whispered seductively of pleasure to come, blotting out reason and logic. Her shoulders were now bared to the seeking ***warth of his touch, but she no longer cared. The tormenting movement of his lips against her skin driving her to a shivering insanity that demanded the hard pressure of his mouth against hers, plunging her into the hot, sweet vortex of desire he had shown her before, his touch a siren song that deafened her to everything else.

As though he read her wayward thoughts, Drew explored the shape of her lips, teasing them with the tip of his tongue, until her mouth parted like the petals of a flower, embracing the bee that sought its sweetness.

Drew’s hands moved downwards, taking her dress with them, but Kirsty no longer cared as the hard, lean fingers covered the lacy cups of her bra, their heat burning through the thin fabric to her skin as Drew moved in restless urgency against her, his mouth bruising hers and drawing from her a response that shocked and scorched her, but which was too powerful for her to resist the compulsive urge to let her fingers slide between the pearl buttons of his shirt to stroke feverishly against the warmth of his chest.

Drew groaned, moving so that both of them were lying on the settee, wrenching open the buttons on his shirt with swift impatience and lifting his mouth from Kirsty’s long enough to demand thickly that she touch him.

She needed no second bidding. There was a dark heady pleasure in simply allowing her hands to move over the heated male flesh, exploring the texture and feel of it.

‘Kirsty!’

She trembled as Drew released her lips, his mouth seeking out the swelling curves of her breasts, highlighted by the lamp’s glow, which lent her skin a soft honey sheen, the taut thrust of her breasts heightened by the lacy structure of her bra. A thrill of wanton desire flooded through her as Kirsty glanced down and saw the darkness of Drew’s hair against her flesh. Her breasts throbbed with an aching tension that half frightened her. Drew’s voice thickened unsteadily as he muttered something against her skin, reaching for the fastening, and Kirsty felt her breath stifle in her throat as he freed her aroused nipples from the constraining lace.

All at once her body seemed alien to her. No man had ever evoked this reaction from her before, and she moaned softly with a need deeply desired, but unknown, until Drew’s thumbs rubbed gently over the swollen peaks, his mouth moving slowly over her creamy skin until it finally possessed the aching fullness.

The whole world seemed to explode in a dizzying mass of sensation, as Kirsty arched instinctively beneath him, hands clinging to the breadth of his shoulders as she sobbed his name and pressed tiny half demented kisses against the musky dampness of his skin.

Excitement and anticipation spiralled up inside her, and it came as a shock to realise that Drew was releasing her, that his heartbeat which had pounded erratically against her was slowing and steadying while hers still raced.

At last when she could bear the silence with which he searched his face no longer, she burst out in a voice that shook with mingled shame and despair.

‘I suppose you think that proves something, but any experienced man could have had the same effect. Any experienced man.’

He was quiet for so long her nerves coiled into hard knots of tension.

‘If that’s true,’ he said at last, sitting up and reaching for his shirt, ‘then I feel very sorry for you.’