Mistress Material

‘Oh, come on...’ The mouth twisted with devilish scorn. ‘I refer to your leisurely scrutiny of my body, Suzanna.’

‘Suki,’ she corrected immediately.

Dark eyebrows were raised in a silent and aloof query. ‘Ah! Of course—Suki.’ He emphasised the word so that it sounded like some sultry profanity. ‘The name you acquired along with your glittering fame as a model, and your many lovers...’

Her mouth fell open and she made a little murmur of protest at such a patent untruth, but he carried on regardless. ‘But no matter,’ he said softly as he surveyed her from slitted, dangerous eyes, ‘what you call yourself. Your basic gutter instincts remain the same, do they not? You looked as if you would like to eat me up. Every inch of me,’ he emphasised hatefully.

Swine!

Colour rushed up to form two heated flares over her high cheekbones as she tossed the thick waves of her hair back over her slender shoulders. Head held high, she spoke from a throat which felt as if it had been lined with the roughest, coarsest sandpaper. ‘You flatter yourself, Pasquale!’ she shot back. ‘But then you always did!’

He gave a small smile then, allowed it to linger and play around his lips. ‘Do I—Suki?’ he returned silkily. ‘Flatter myself?’ And the sudden change in the timbre of his voice, the velvet caress as he spoke her name, sent her senses jangling. The flow of blood around her veins altered; became slow and heavy. She felt the pulse-points beating insistently at her temples, her wrists... and ... shamefully.. deep, deep within her groin as he stared down at her.

But more was to follow as his eyes roamed almost indifferently over her face, seemingly careless of her enormous eyes gazing helplessly at him or of her wide mouth throbbing in an unconsciously provocative moue.

The only flash of life and of interest came when his gaze came at last to alight on her breasts and then the indifference was replaced by a feral light and his eyes darkened as they took in the lush, creamy mounds. She felt them tingle, become heavy and swollen, the tips burning with tingling excitement. And as he gave a coldly triumphant smile she realised to her horror that the forgotten bikini-top had slipped right down, exposing most of her for his scathing delectation. ‘Oh, no!’ she cried, and clapped both palms protectively over her breasts.

He said something very softly in Italian as his eyes narrowed. ‘Please do not cover them, cara,’ he murmured, on a husky entreaty. ‘Such magnificent breasts. How I long to touch them. To take each tip into my mouth and to suckle each one until—’

Suki grabbed a towel and threw it over herself, squirming with embarrassment and an excitement which was painfully acute as she struggled to haul the flimsy gold material back into place, but faced with that look of hunger in those dark, magnificent eyes she was all fingers and thumbs.

She hadn’t seen him for seven years, and yet two minutes in his company was enough to plunge her into dark and erotic waters which were threatening to completely submerge her. It was a nightmare. ‘Get—away from me,’ she managed, on a croak. ‘Now!’

He didn’t move; he didn’t need to—because he was actually standing beside her, not touching her at all, but at her words he seemed to pull himself together, because the raw heat of need was wiped from his face leaving nothing but a coldly contemptuous mask. ‘Certainly,’ he concurred, in a voice which was strangely harsh and a touch unsteady. ‘There is little pleasure to be gained from a woman who offers herself so freely.’

Stung, Suki glared up at him from narrow amber eyes which threatened to glimmer with tears of self-disgust. But she kept them at bay.

Just.

‘I wouldn’t offer myself to you if you were the last man in the universe!’

‘No? You have undergone a radical change of personality, then?’ he mocked.

What could she say? She wasn’t hypocritical enough to deny just how dreadfully she had once behaved with Pasquale Caliandro.

Still clutching the towel to her, she sat up, and the glint in his eye was unmistakable. Curiosity warred with common sense; and curiosity won hands down. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, her heart beginning to race erratically as a schoolgirlish hope she’d thought long dead re-emerged with startling strength. ‘You haven’t—followed me here?’

To her fury, he actually threw his dark head back and laughed aloud, a glorious, mellifluous sound which made several people turn round to look at them. But when he’d stopped laughing the face which regarded her was cold and unsmiling. ‘Followed you?’ he queried, and the trace of sardonic incredulity made her blood boil. ‘Now why on earth should I want to do that?’

Suki shrugged, a desire for revenge chipping away at her insistently. ‘Your reputation with women is legendary,’ she said coolly.

‘Is it, now?’ he queried softly. ‘I wasn’t aware that you had such intimate knowledge of my behaviour.’

She sought to disillusion him of the idea that she somehow spent all her spare time finding out about him and his fabled exploits with the fairer sex. ‘I read the gossip columns like everyone else,’ she said.

‘Ah!’ He nodded. ‘So you do. But at least, cara, I do not have the reputation of breaking up other people’s relationships. Unlike you,’ he accused, and he nodded again when he saw her colour heighten. ‘Yes,’ he affirmed. ‘You see, I too read the gossip columns.’

Oh, those wretched tabloids! According to them, she’d had more lovers than Mata Hari! ‘If you’re referring to that ridiculous scandal in New York—that was a pack of lies!’ Suki defended hotly.

He raised a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘Oh, really? So the photographer’s girlfriend made the whole thing up, did she? You weren’t sleeping with her boyfriend?’

‘No, I wasn’t!’

His mouth curved contemptuously. ‘And the newly married Arabian prince who courted you so assiduously in front of his young bride last year... Tell me, was that also a pack of lies?’

Suki sighed as she remembered that sorry little affair. She’d met Prince Abdul at a cocktail party thrown by the Foreign Office in Paris. He had been ridiculously infatuated—mostly, Suki suspected, because she hadn’t been the slightest bit interested in him. He had always had everything he’d always wanted, and he had wanted her!

He had actually asked her to be his second bride—but without even bothering to divorce the first one! She had intended telling Prince Abdul exactly what she thought of him, but one of the diplomats at the Foreign Office had sought her out for a quiet word. There was a big oil deal going through between Prince Abdul’s country and Britain. Best not to actually turn him down outright, but to let him down gently...

In fact, afterwards the diplomat had told her that she had been a great help to her country—maybe Pasquale should hear about that! She held her head up proudly and looked him straight in the eye. ‘There happens to be a perfectly simple explanation for that,’ she said reasonably.

But it seemed that he wasn’t interested in reason, or an explanation, because his dark eyes were boring into hers, an expression of scorn lifting the corner of his exquisite mouth. ‘And even given my supposed reputation,’ he gritted, ‘do you somehow imagine that I am so desperate as to follow and to find you? You who are everything that I most despise in a woman?’

Stung by the biting criticism, Suki was momentarily lost for words, her cheeks flaring at the denigrating accusation he’d thrown at her. Yes, OK, she hadn’t behaved too well, but surely her foolish youthful behaviour with him didn’t warrant that kind of censure? ‘I really don’t think that’s fair...’ she faltered.

But he had crouched down so that their eyes were on a level, and she could almost see the hostility emanating from him in pure waves towards her. ‘When I go searching for a woman,’ he said deliberately, ‘it will be for someone as unlike you as possible. Though I’m not sure that she exists—because I’ve certainly never come across her.

‘You see, Suki, I’m waiting for the woman who doesn’t give me the green light the instant that I meet her. Most men-and certainly this man—are turned on by the thrill of the chase before the capture. Something which is gained so easily has little intrinsic value, I believe.’

Suki was shaken to the core by the depth of his dislike, but she was damned sure she wouldn’t show it. Her amber eyes glinted dangerously. ‘I don’t have to lie here and listen to this—’

‘No, indeed,’ he agreed, in his deep drawl, his eyes hot and hungry with sexual mischief. ‘I have a much better idea. Why don’t we move away? You could lie down somewhere else. With me...’

Somehow he managed to imbue the suggestion with so much sensual promise that it took Suki every last ounce of pride she possessed to answer him back. ‘Spare me your cheap innuendo!’ she said, her eyes sparking amber fire. ‘And make your mind up! Either you despise me so much that my very presence contaminates you or you’re extending an extremely unsubtle invitation to get me into bed with you—you can’t do both, Pasquale.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Dear, dear—a supposedly intelligent man like you really ought to be able to see such gaping holes in your logic.’

She saw the warning light of battle in his eyes, but when he spoke his voice was very soft. ‘A man does not always think with his head,’ he said insultingly.

That did it! ‘Get out of my way,’ she said from between gritted teeth, and she swung her long, faintly tanned legs over the side of the lounger. First glancing down to check that she was halfway decent, she dropped the towel onto the lounger, then got to her feet, looking around in vain for Salvatore, the photographer who had brought her to this house-party outside Cannes.

It was supposed to have been the relaxing finale to two days of solid shooting for a book of photographs Salvatore was producing. Relaxing—huh! About as relaxing as being on the front line of a war-zone, with the arrival of Pasquale Caliandro. Suki began to move away.

‘Oh, no. Not so fast.’ In a single, snake-like movement Pasquale had captured her tiny wrist in the strong grasp of his hand and Suki was horrified how her body thrilled to that first contact of flesh on flesh. And why did he have to be so tall? So powerful? So gorgeous? Her throat constricted.

‘Let me go—’

He shook his head with implacable confidence. ‘No. You and I need to talk.’

‘I have nothing to say to you—’

‘But I,’ he said, and his voice was husky with intent, ‘have plenty to say to you.’

‘I’m not interested.’ But oh, what a lie, for despite her instinctive and purely protective need to put as much distance between them as possible she was bursting to know what he wanted—and she was certain that he’d guessed as much.

He gave a small, humourless smile. ‘On the contrary—I think you might be.’

He still held her wrist and she was powerless to move, and Suki realised that to an outsider it would appear that he was holding her lightly, almost affectionately—the steely determination of his grip would not be apparent to anyone else.

She tried a different approach. After all, she’d had to fend men off before. She tipped her head to one side, so that the long curls—the colour of golden syrup glinting in the sunshine, or so she’d been told—fell over her bosom. ‘If you carry on like that, Pasquale,’ she said reasonably, ‘then you’ll really leave me no choice other than to scream, and I’m sure that would do your reputation no good whatsoever.’