The Billionaire Bodyguard(9)

She closed her  eyes and ate it, afraid to see the mocking look of  triumph in his, but  sheer greed-a new and rather frightening  animal-took over and she gave  an instinctive little moan of pleasure.

'Like it?' he murmured.

Her  eyes snapped open, but it was not triumph she read in his eyes, but   relish, as if he was pleased to see her discovering the delight of   indulging her hunger and then satisfying it.

Keri shrugged and gave him a rueful look. 'It's delicious.'

He put some more on the fork and held it up to her. 'See what you've been missing?'                       
       
           



       

She shook her head. 'No, honestly, I couldn't … '

'Shut up,' he said, but gently. 'And eat.'

The  second forkful went the way of the first, and two more followed.  She  shook her head. 'I mustn't have any more-really, Jay-I'm eating all  your  supper!'

He considered telling her that he had deliberately put  enough food on  the plate for two, but decided against it. If she thought  it had been  pre-planned then her defences might go up, and that he most  definitely  didn't want.

The heaped fork moved from where it  hovered close to her mouth back to  his, and his lips closed round it.  Something about that gesture was  deeply erotic. There was silence, save  for the spitting of the fire,  and her eyes were fixed to his, as if they  had drawn her in by their  sheer, mesmeric power, rendering her  incapable of breaking the gaze.

He licked his lips and smiled. 'One for me, and one for … you.'

Keri  opened her mouth like an obedient child, feeling both weak and  strong  as he fed her again. The food was filling her full of warmth and  energy,  but it was an odd, slumberous kind of energy, and with it came   helplessness as she recognised that never before had she realised that   eating in itself could be a very sexual act.

Very soon the plate  was completely clean, and Jay surveyed it with  satisfaction and then  looked at her. 'What a pity it's all gone. I was  enjoying that.' He  meant the feeding, not the eating.

Another gulp of wine. 'Yes.'

He  glanced down at the dish of peaches-all golden and glistening and   slickly luscious-and the stealthy beat of desire grew even stronger.   'We've still got pudding,' he said softly, and his eyes gleamed out a   silent challenge. 'Your turn now.'

But Keri couldn't. Just the  thought of slipping the soft fruit into his  mouth was enough to make her  feel very churned up indeed. Her hand  would shake-she just knew it  would-and then he might get some inkling  of what was going on inside her  head.


And her body.

Her limbs felt weighted and  deliciously lethargic, and yet there was  the sensation of blood beating  like thick syrup through her veins, of  her fingers and toes inexorably  unfurling, along with her senses.

She shook her head, grounded and yet unbearably dizzy. 'Not for me, thanks, I'm full-but help yourself.'

Jay  didn't want the peaches, not unless she was going to feed them to  him  the way he had done to her, but his brief feeling of disappointment  was  replaced by an infinitely better one of expectation. He thought of  the  blonde who had been pursuing him these past months-she wouldn't  have fed  him the peaches either, but by now she probably would have had  half his  clothes off and be busy feeding herself on his body.

It had been a long time, he realised, since he had wanted something he wasn't sure he was going to get.

'I'll  pass too,' he said idly, and leaned back against the sofa  instead,  cradling the claret in his hand and watching the living beauty  of the  fire. 'So, how long have you been a model?'

The question broke  the mood she had longed to be broken, but Keri had  to fight her  unreasonable sense of dismay. Conversation like this was  safer by  far-and surely that was preferable?

The wine had made her  garrulous. 'Since I left school-well, actually,  that's not quite true-I  was still at school.' She thought how at ease  he looked, lying there,  one leg bent at the knee as he balanced his  weight negligently on his  elbow, the wine sending out dappled ruby  reflections over his strong  fingers, and she found herself imagining  those fingers running with  instinctive mastery over her body. Oh, for  heaven's sake, Keri, she  chided herself-since when did you start having  fantasies like that?

'Mmm?'  He raised his dark eyebrows, as if to prompt her, trying to rid  himself  of the image of her in pigtails and a school uniform.

With an effort she dragged her mind back to the subject in question. 'I was visiting London with my sister-'

'Is she a model too?'

Keri  shook her head. 'No, she's a mother.' And a widow. She rushed on,  the  thoughts of that too painful. 'We were just having a coffee at  Waterloo  Station when a woman came over and asked if I'd ever thought  about  modelling.'

'The way it happens in all the movies?'

'Sort of.'

'And had you thought about it before that?'

Keri shrugged. 'It had crossed my mind from time to time-other people were always telling me I should try-but … '

His eyes gleamed. 'But?'                       
       
           



       

'Well,  what I really wanted to do was interior design. Added to that I  was  very tall and very skinny, and that makes you kind of  self-conscious.'

'Not the best quality for someone hoping for a career in front of the cameras, I would have thought,' he observed thoughtfully.

She  had thought that too, but had soon discovered that a skinny and   insecure girl who towered over her peers could become someone else in   front of the camera. When it was make-believe it was easy to pretend   that you were supremely confident and at ease with yourself.

'I  was lucky,' she said truthfully. 'All that self-consciousness just   vanished in front of the lens-and my face is one of those which looks   better in photographs than it does in real life.'

He didn't  agree. He thought she looked softer and more touchable in  real life-far  more of a woman when she wasn't acting up for the lens.  'The camera  loves you, you mean?'

She nodded. 'So far-touch wood.'

'And what happens when it no longer does?'

Keri  frowned. With uncanny precision he had alighted on every model's  most  abiding fear-of being last-year's face, the face the public have  tired  of. 'Some people go on for years,' she said defensively.

'That isn't what I asked,' he mused. 'I was asking when-because presumably few continue into old age?'

Keri  sipped at her wine again, because that seemed easier than  answering  straight away. He really did seem uncomfortably good at  asking the right  sort of questions. Or the wrong. She couldn't think of  an answer that  would satisfy him-or herself. That occasionally she  dreamed of a  'normal' life? If she said she wanted to get married and  start a family  it would sound needy, as if she was unfulfilled because  she didn't have a  man.

And that wasn't true-she couldn't even lose herself in the  everywoman  fantasy about one day falling in love with a man who matched  her every  emotional and physical need. The two seemed intertwined; you  couldn't  have one without the other-and when you had never had one in   particular …

She was aware that he was still looking at her  questioningly, and she  hoped that those discerning eyes hadn't noticed  the fact that her  cheeks had grown warm-but even if they had she guessed  she could always  blame it on the fire.

She stared into the flickering flames. 'I've never really given much thought to the future.'

'So the interior design went by the wayside?'

'I  guess it did.' She looked up at him and met the question in his eyes   with a shrug. 'I've done a few projects-just for fun, really-my own   apartment and my sister's house, and I loved doing those.'

'So why not switch careers?'

'Because  I haven't quite reached the stage of ageing has-been,' she  remarked  sardonically. 'And even if I wanted to it's notoriously  difficult to  break into something like that unless you have experience,  and to gain  experience you have to start at the bottom of the ladder.'  She gave a  grimace. 'And I'm not sure I'd want to do that. Not now.'

'You could always branch out on your own,' he suggested.

Keri  frowned. Since when had he become an expert on careers? He was  hardly  in a position to offer advice! She switched the interrogation  from him  to her. 'And what about you? I mean, do you plan to be a  driver for the  rest of your life?'

Her subtle emphasis on the word driver didn't  escape him, and Jay  smiled as he refilled their glasses. She wanted to  put some distance  between them, to tell him that he was stepping out of  line by asking  such searching questions, particularly given his lowly  status.