A Secret Seduction: A Secret Until Now / A Sinful Seduction / Secrets of a Shy Socialite

Because you like it?

The crazy thought almost made her laugh. She pulled her sunglasses down again.

‘I’d love to discuss your idea but—’

Angel dug her fingernails into her palms, focusing on the pain to help her fight her way to control. She turned her head and his hand fell away.

Digging her heels into the sand, she said, ‘It wasn’t an idea.’ Her voice sounded very small, the scornful laugh weak— Well, actually, pathetically unconvincing.

‘Don’t sulk,’ he said, drawing an outraged gasp. ‘Obviously I want to have sex with you.’

He delivered this piece of information in a manner she associated more with ordering a pizza than propositioning. The violent lurch in her chest was possibly, Angel mused, her heart stopping. Despite the possibility of her imminent expiration she somehow—it was a miracle—kept her expression blank. Thank goodness for sunglasses.

‘I get that a lot.’

Not a lie, but she’d never felt in danger of requiring CPR before. Or...best to treat the comment as a joke—the alternative was not something she felt equipped to cope with.

She saw something flash in his eyes—anger?

‘I’m sure you do,’ he countered smoothly, ‘but on this occasion I was thinking more along the lines of lunch.’

Lunch with Alex Arlov? Now, that was a crazy idea.

Or was it? Wasn’t this an opportunity to get to know Jas’s father in the nonbiblical sense? She still needed to decide if he was a man she wanted to be involved in her daughter’s life. For that judgement she had to put her personal feelings aside.

And what were her personal feelings?

She gave her head a tiny shake and pulled her hat more firmly down on her dark hair, glad that he could not hear her thoughts or, thanks to the tinted lenses, see her confusion. Normally someone who had a head-on approach to life, she had been skirting around that question since he had reappeared in her life.

And with good reason. Feelings... It sounded so simple but how was she meant to analyse something so, so...visceral? It was easier to accept it. What was the point of delving deeper? At its most basic, she was attracted to him, but that hardly made her special. She had seen the way women looked at him...all women. He was a man who inspired lust and around him she dropped several IQ points; her brain just didn’t function at full capacity. In fact sometimes it just didn’t function full stop!

Well, they were welcome to him, she told herself. At least she had the maturity now to be able to differentiate between lust and deeper, more profound emotions.

Tell that to your nervous system!

‘Eating is not one of the things you are barred from doing, is it?’ He unscrewed the bottle of water he had been carrying. Halfway to his mouth he paused and extended it towards her. ‘Want some?’

‘No, thank you,’ she responded, primly polite.

‘Is it?’ he said, wiping his mouth with his hand.

She started guiltily—her eyes had been riveted on the muscles working in his brown throat as he swallowed. ‘What?’

‘They haven’t banned you from eating?’

‘That depends on the calorie count. They are worried about my hips.’ She was regretting the flippant remark even before she had finished speaking, but managed not to make the moment any worse by successfully resisting the impulse to tug the spangled, jewel-bright fabric of her cover-up lower over her hips. As his head tilted to one side his eyes slid over her sleek, smooth curves, lingering on the supposed problem area.

After a nerve-shredding moment his gaze lifted, his expression blank, but the glow in his eyes made her stomach flip. ‘Yes, I can see you must need to be careful,’ he delivered in a deadpan tone, thinking that he had never met a woman who so totally encapsulated all things erotic and sensual.

Wide and indignant, her eyes flew to his face. A moment later her tension fell away and she was laughing in response to the gleam in his blue eyes. Then the gleam changed, became not amused, and she looked away quickly, her heart thudding, her mouth dry.

‘How would you like it if I drew attention to your flaws?’ He didn’t have any—at least not physical ones.

‘You brought your hips into this discussion,’ he reminded her. ‘Not that I’m complaining, and if you’re going to tell me you have any self-esteem issues don’t waste your breath.’

His heavy-lidded glance moved from her lips, sweeping downwards over the length of her sinuous, sleek, leggy frame. No woman could be as unselfconscious in bed as Angel had been if she was not happy in her own skin. She had taken pleasure from her own body as much as she had from his, and he had never known a woman to display such fascination with his body before or since.

Without warning a piercing stab of pure lust sliced through him, raising the level of his arousal painfully as he allowed the door in his head to open a crack for the memories to push through, not in a controlled way but in one hot, steamy rush. His brilliant eyes darkened and glazed with licking flames as he saw...felt...her hands gliding over his skin, the moisture of her tongue.

Her lovemaking had been as generous as her cushiony soft lips... It had never crossed his mind for a split second that she had been a virgin, not even when she had been so tight when he had entered. There had been that shocked little cry, but he had taken that as a compliment.

Maybe you didn’t want to know, Alex?

The sudden audible crack of his finger joints made Angel’s questioning gaze shift from his extended fingers to his face. The golden skin was pulled taut across his magnificent bones; his angular jaw was tensed; his eyes remained hidden by the luxuriant sweep of his preposterously long eyelashes.

She could see the tension in the rigidity of his powerful shoulders as he reached down and took her hand.

‘You shouldn’t be sitting here in the midday sun.’

She didn’t react to his impatient tone; she reacted to an unacknowledged desire to make contact and to the fizz of electricity through her body that made her head buzz as she allowed him to pull her to her feet.

When she pulled her fingers free they continued to tingle. She held her hand against her chest and struggled to take control of her breathing...and then found she was virtually panting! Acting like some sort of sexually deprived bimbo was sending out all the wrong messages.

Or, more worryingly, the right ones!

Her laughter was as uninhibited as her lovemaking had been in his thoughts.

‘I will personally guarantee your physical safety.’ He arched a brow and held out a hand towards her. ‘I have said something that amuses you?’

She looked at the hand and thought, You don’t make me feel safe. A lot of other things, but not safe.

‘I don’t require a bodyguard.’

Their glances connected and suddenly the fizz between them made it hard for her to breathe.

‘How about a charming companion and lunch?’

‘Really?’ She made a pantomime of looking around. ‘Where would I find one of those?’ she asked, before adding almost shyly, ‘Lunch would be good.’

When her desperate attempt at humour did not produce even a half smile Angel huffed a sigh. ‘I am hungry,’ she admitted, thinking, Where is the harm? And she was doing this for Jas. She wasn’t looking for a soulmate, but that was no reason to deprive her daughter of a dad. Though that did depend on the dad.... And how was she meant to judge if he was good enough for Jas if she ran away every time she saw him?

What sort of man was he?

Oh, she’d read the stuff on the internet and knew about the wealth, the enigmatic reputation that had resulted in some wild speculation, and she took all that with a pinch of salt, but the man did come across as a mass of contradictions.

They walked in silence along the path that led from the beach through sweet-scented pine trees. Once or twice she looked up at the tall man walking beside her and he seemed lost in thought and showed no inclination to engage her in conversation. This suited Angel, who made no attempt to break the stalemate, though, as she mockingly told herself, in order to get to know him she might have to speak at some point.

As they reached the place where the path entered the hotel’s gardens Alex took a left turn instead and opened a gate marked Private that had always previously been locked.