Conveniently His Omnibus(41)

‘No,’ Saskia protested immediately. ‘I’d rather eat out.’

She could see that Andreas was frowning.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ he told her flatly. ‘A woman on her own, especially a woman like you, is bound to attract attention, and besides, you look tired. I have to go out, and I have no idea what time I will be back.’

Andreas was going out. Saskia could feel her anxiety easing. Her feet ached from the unaccustomed pavement-pounding and her brain was exhausted with the effort of keeping a running tab on just how much money Andreas, and therefore she, had spent.

Far more than she had wanted to spend. So much that just thinking about it was making her feel distinctly ill. Wretchedly she acknowledged that there would be precious little left of her hard-earned little nest egg once she had repaid Andreas what he had spent.

Tiredly Saskia followed Andreas through the underground car park and into the foyer of the apartment block. A special key was needed to use the lift, which glided upwards so smoothly that Saskia’s eyes rounded in shock when it came to a standstill. She had not even realised that they were moving.

‘It’s this way,’ Andreas told her, touching her arm and guiding her towards one of the four doorways opening off the entrance lobby. He was carrying her case, which he put down as he unlocked the door, motioning to Saskia to precede him into the elegant space beyond it.





                 CHAPTER FIVE

THE FIRST THING that struck Saskia about Andreas’s apartment was not the very expensive modern art hanging on the hallway’s walls but its smell—a musky, throat-closing, shockingly overpowering scent which stung her nostrils and made her tense.

That Andreas was equally aware of it she was in no doubt. Saskia could see him pause and lift his head, like a hunting panther sniffing the air.

‘Hell... Hell and damnation,’ she heard him mutter ferociously beneath his breath, and then, to her shock, he thrust open the door into the huge-windowed living space that lay beyond the lobby and took hold of her. His fingers bit into the soft flesh of her arms, his breath a warning whisper against her lips as his eyes blazed down into the unguarded shocked softness of hers, dark as obsidian, hard as flint, commanding...warning...

‘Alone at last. How you have enjoyed teasing me today, my loved one, but now I have you to myself and I can exact what punishment on you I wish...’

The soft crooning tone of his voice as much as his words scattered what was left of her senses, leaving Saskia clinging weakly to him as the shock ripped through her in a floodtide. Then his mouth was covering hers, silencing the protest she was trying to make, his lips moulding, shaping, coaxing, seducing hers with an expertise that flattened her defences as effectively as an atom bomb.

Incoherently Saskia whispered his name, trying to insist on a cessation of what he was doing and an explanation for it. But her lips, her mouth, her senses, unused to so much sensual stimulation, were defying reason and caution and everything else that Saskia’s bemused brain was trying to tell them. Her frozen shock melted beneath the heat of the pleasure Andreas’s hungry passionate expertise was showing her, and her lips softened and trembled into an unguarded, uninhibited response.

Without being aware of what she was doing Saskia strained to get closer to Andreas, standing on tiptoe so that she could cling ardently to the delicious pleasure of his kiss. Her hands on his arms registered the sheer size and inflexibility of the muscles beneath them whilst her heart pounded in awed inexperienced shock at the intensity of what she was feeling.

Even more than she could smell that musky, overpowering female perfume, she could smell Andreas himself. His heat...his passion...his maleness... And shockingly something in her, something she hadn’t known existed, was responding to it just as her lips were responding to him...just as she was responding to him, swaying into his arms compliantly, her body urging him to draw her close, to let her feel the rest of his male strength.

Dizzily Saskia opened the eyes she had closed at the first touch of his mouth on hers, shivering as she saw the sparks of raw sensuality darting like lightning from his eyes as he stared down at her. It was like hanging way above the earth in a dizzying, death-defying place where she could feel her danger and yet at the same time know somehow she would be safe.

‘You love like an innocent...a virgin...’ Andreas was telling her huskily, and as he did so the sparks glittering in his eyes intensified, as though he found something very satisfying about such a notion.

Helplessly Saskia stared back at him. Her heart was thudding frantically fast and her body was filled with an unfamiliar shocking ache that was a physical need to have him touch her, to have his hand run slowly over her skin and reach right through it to that place where her unfamiliar ache began, so that he could surround and soothe it. Somehow just thinking about him doing such a thing increased the ache to a pounding throb, a wild, primitive beat that made her moan and sway even closer to him.

‘You like that... You want me...’

As he spoke to her she could hear and feel the urgency in his voice, could feel his arousal. Eagerly she pressed closer to him, only to freeze as she suddenly heard a woman’s voice demanding sharply, ‘Andreas? Aren’t you going to introduce me?’

Immediately she realised what she was doing and shame flooded through her, but as she tried to pull away, desperate to conceal her confusion, Andreas held on to her, forcing her to stay where she was, forcing her even more closely into his body so that somehow she was leaning against him, as though...as though...

She trembled as she felt the powerful thrust of his leg between her own, her face burning hotly with embarrassed colour as she realised the sexual connotation that their pose suggested. But it seemed that the woman who was watching them was not similarly self-conscious.

Saskia caught her breath as Andreas allowed her to turn her head and look at the woman.

She was tall and dark-haired, everything about her immaculately groomed, but despite the warmth of her olive skin and the ripe richness of her painted mouth and nails Saskia shivered as she sensed her innate coldness.

‘Athena,’ Andreas was demanding shortly, ‘how did you get in here?’

‘I have a key. Have you forgotten?’ the other woman purred.

The sloe-eyed look she gave Andreas and the way she was managing to totally exclude Saskia both from their conversation and from her line of vision left Saskia ruefully reflecting on her earlier mental picture of a devastated widow being too grief-stricken at the loss of her husband to prevent herself from being bullied into a second marriage.

No one would ever bully this woman into anything...and as for her being grief-stricken—there was only one emotion Saskia could see in those dark eyes and it had nothing to do with grief.

She forced down the sudden surge of nausea that burned in her throat as she witnessed the look of pure condensed lust that Athena was giving Andreas. Saskia had never imagined, never mind seen, a woman looking at a man in such a powerfully and openly predatory sexual way.

Now she could understand why Andreas had felt in need of a mock fiancée to protect himself, but what she could not understand was how on earth Andreas could resist the other woman’s desire for him.

She was blindingly sensually attractive, and obviously wanted Andreas. And surely that was what all men fantasised about—a woman whose sexual appetite for them could never be satiated.

Naively Saskia assumed that only her own sex would be put off by Athena’s intrinsic coldness and by the lack of any real loving emotion in her make-up.

Andreas had obviously kissed Saskia because he had guessed that Athena was in the apartment, and now that the other woman was standing so close to them both Saskia knew how he had known. That perfume of hers was as unmistakable as it was unappealing.

‘Aren’t you going to say how pleased you are to see me?’ Athena was pouting as she moved closer to Andreas. ‘Your grandfather is very upset about your engagement. You know what he was hoping for,’ she added meaningfully, before turning to Saskia and saying dismissively, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, but I’m sure Andreas must have warned you how difficult it is going to be for all his family, especially for his grandfather, to accept you...’

‘Athena,’ Andreas was saying warningly, and Saskia could well imagine how she would have felt to be confronted by such a statement, if she and Andreas were genuinely engaged.

‘But it’s the truth,’ Athena was continuing unrepentantly, and she shrugged her shoulders, the movement drawing attention to the fullness of her breasts. Breasts which Saskia could quite easily see were naked and unfettered beneath the fine cotton shirt she was wearing.

Quickly she averted her gaze from the sight of Athena’s flauntingly erect nipples, not daring to allow herself to look at Andreas. Surely no man could resist the demand that those nipples were making on his attention...his concentration...his admiration for their perfection and sexuality. Her own breasts were well shaped and firm, but her nipples did not have that flamboyant fullness that the other woman’s possessed and, even if they had, Saskia knew that she would have felt embarrassed about making such a public display of them.