‘There’s no need for you to storm off in one of your Latin American moods,’ Laura called to him, which instantly made him stop in his tracks and dragged a reluctant smile to his lips. He turned slowly to face her and realised that she had not moved an inch from where she had been standing at the door to the guest room.
‘Just as there is no need for you to constantly harp on about your status as my employee.’
They stared at one another from one end of the corridor to the other.
She could have told him that seeing her reduced to that status had been the object of his exercise, and that the only reason he was now choosing to overlook the little detail was because they were lovers and even he must feel some guilt at making love to the woman he had sought out for purposes of revenge.
But she held her tongue.
To have said any of those things would have made their already precarious bubble burst into a million smithereens and she wanted to hold onto the bubble for as long as she could.
Eventually, she shrugged lightly and stepped towards him.
‘If you don’t mind my taste, then I’ll furnish your house just as I would furnish my own,’ she said, walking towards him, and she was rewarded with one of those blisteringly sexy smiles that almost made her falter in her tracks.
‘I think it is time you saw the master bedroom,’ Gabriel murmured, not taking his eyes off her approaching figure for a second, it is the one room in the house I actually chose for myself.’
He reached out sideways to push open a door to his right, watching her intently as she came towards him and only turning away when she too turned to gape at the room in front of her.
Gone was the impersonal beauty of the previous rooms she had explored. Here was a room that breathed masculinity. The bed was very low to the ground and the dark, swirling colours of the quilt demanded touching. A rich, dark wooden chest of drawers banked one wall and the pale carpet was almost unseen beneath a massive Persian rug that dominated the floor space. Heavy, deep blue velvet drapes completed the feeling of eroticism.
‘You like it?’ he whispered into her ear and all Laura could do was nod in wonder at the vibrant mix of colours, none of which seemed out of place although most of them clashed.
‘The quilt cover is silk,’ he said softly, it feels magnificent against bare skin. Would you like to try?’
The mere thought of them writhing naked on top of the silk made her skin begin to tingle, and with supreme confidence he took her hand and led her over to the bed, leaving her to stand by it only for as long as it took him to draw the curtains, plunging the room into instant darkness.
‘A sensual boudoir,’ Laura said as he lit four bulky candles of varying heights on the chest of drawers. ‘Was this your intention when you ...created it?’
Gabriel nodded and omitted to mention that it had been a chaste boudoir. He had never brought any of his women back to this house, preferring to see them in his penthouse in London. She was the first, but damned if she would know that.
He moved to where she was still standing and pulled off the shirt, groaning involuntarily as his hands slipped under the vest to find the heavy warmth of her bare breasts.
He rolled his thumbs over the tightened peaks of her nipples and half closed his eyes as she slipped the vest over her head and tossed it to the ground. Then the trousers. Down they came, followed by the lacy underwear. She had been right. Making love in a car did not lend itself to the delight of seeing her exquisite, naked body.
‘And what would you like me to do on this silk duvet of yours?’ Laura murmured seductively.#p#分页标题#e#
‘For starters, just lie on it and let me see you.’
It felt as beautiful as it had promised. Laura stretched on the bed, watching him through half-closed eyes, and began moving sensuously for his languid viewing. When her hand trailed along her stomach to ruffle the fine fair hair that guarded her sex, Gabriel sank onto the covers with a grunt of savage passion and captured her wandering hand with his own.
‘You little hussy,’ he growled. ‘Do not even think about touching yourself. That is for my enjoyment only.’
And he was about to prove that very point when the doorbell shrieked into the thick silence and Anna’s voice crackled on the intercom in the bedroom, laughing and asking Gabriel, ‘Where are you?’
CHAPTER NINE
Laura walked tentatively towards the kitchen. The sound of Anna’s voice had galvanised them both into action. In Gabriel’s case, it had been a simple matter of running his fingers through his hair whilst swearing darkly under his breath about interruptions, and then going downstairs to open the front door.