novels by Miranda Lee - الصفحة 5

24-10-07, 03:58 PM

المشاركة رقم: 21

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الكاتب:	Mai Ziyada
اللقب:	ليلاس متالق

البيانات
التسجيل:	Jul 2007
العضوية:	33118
المشاركات:	270
الجنس	أنثى
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نقاط التقييم:	152

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كاتب الموضوع : Mai Ziyada المنتدى : الارشيف

CHAPTER EIGHT
JASON COULD NOT believe how nervous he felt as he waited for Leah to answer her doorbell. Like a schoolboy on his first real date.
Once she’d invited him up, he hadn’t had the patience to take the lift. Instead, he’d charged up the three flights of stairs, taking several steps at a time, arriving at her floor with his blood hot and his heart galloping like a racehorse in the final furlong of the Melbourne Cup.
The door finally opened, and his pounding heart skidded to a halt.
During his swinging single years—before he’d met and married Karen—Jason had had apartment doors opened to him by sexily dressed women. And scantily clad women. Once, he’d even been met at the door by a stark naked woman.
But none had affected him as powerfully as the sight of Leah Johannsen, encased in a Japanese-style robe that was almost as exquisite as she was.
The fact that she was braless beneath the red silk kimono was swiftly all too evident. So was the fact that she was either as excited as he was…or very cold.
Given it was summer, he didn’t think the latter was an option. Not a calming thought.
Jason suddenly didn’t know where to look. Certainly not at her rock-like nipples. Or into her seductive green eyes. Or that softly luscious mouth whose lipstick he could still taste on his own lips.
He found himself staring over her shoulder into the main living area of her apartment, noting its spaciousness, and style. Nothing bargain-basement in there. Or shared. Jason knew, without being told, that Leah didn’t have any flatmates. She lived here alone. The only unknown was how she could afford it. A dark suspicion invaded his mind. Maybe she didn’t always live here alone. Maybe someone else paid the rent, then paid her the occasional visit. Maybe that was where the problem lay with her. She already had a rich lover and wasn’t free to take another.
‘Come in,’ she said throatily, taking a step back and waving him inside.
As he moved past her, Jason glanced down at her bare but beautiful feet with their scarlet painted toes, thinking to himself that he would have those feet wound around him before this night was out, regardless.
His heart jolted back into life, thudding with wicked purpose.
‘This is a pretty swanky place,’ he heard himself saying as he moved across the plush, sable-coloured carpet towards the elegant seating arrangement in the centre of the room. ‘How on earth can you afford it on your salary?’
He turned to find her regarding him with an expression that made him feel ashamed of his suspicion.
‘I can’t,’ she replied coldly. ‘I own this apartment. I bought it with some money that was left to me a couple of years ago.’
Jason’s eyebrows lifted. Had to have been a reasonably sizeable inheritance. ‘I see,’ he said.
‘I doubt it,’ she snapped, and walked over to pick up a glass of wine, which was sitting on one of the two side tables flanking the rich cream sofa.
‘Forgive me if I don’t offer you a drink just yet,’ she said, and gulped down the wine. ‘I need a little Dutch courage here,’ she added as she placed the glass back where it came from.
Before he could open his mouth to ask her what was going on, her hands went to the sash around her waist.
Shock had him swallowing. As much as he wanted this girl, he didn’t want her to strip off in front of him like…like some cheap slut. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss as he had before. He wanted to hear her moan, feel her melt against him. He wanted to make love to her, damn it!
But she didn’t undo the ties. Instead, she gripped them tightly in one hand whilst her other hand moved down to splay across her stomach, like she was holding it in. Suddenly, she shoved her right leg forward, the action parting the robe right up to mid-thigh, but no further. All Jason could see was her leg. A very beautifully shaped leg with a nice calf muscle and slender ankle.
But just a leg.

Leah watched his eyes like a hawk watches its prey. Watched them and waited.
But the only emotion she could find in his startled gaze was surprise, followed by a weird kind of relief.
Was the man blind? Surely he could see the scars. Surely!
But he didn’t seem to notice them.
When she looked down, Leah saw that the worst of the scars were still hidden by the robe. In her efforts to maintain her dignity, she’d kept the darned thing shut too far.
‘Now can you see them?’ she said, thrusting her leg out a bit further, at the same time pointing her toe and unbending her knee.
He just blinked. Nothing more. Just a blink, followed by a small frown of bewilderment.
‘Yes,’ he eventually replied. ‘I can see them.’
‘And?’ she ground out, totally thrown by his reaction. He had to be pretending. Had to be. No one could look at those ugly white ridges and not feel some repulsion. She was repulsed, and she’d lived with them for two years.
‘Is this what the problem is?’ he questioned her quietly, his gaze no longer on her leg, but on her face. ‘Those little marks on your thigh?’
‘Little marks?’ she practically screamed at him as she pulled her leg back in and wrapped the robe back defensively around it. ‘They’re not little marks. They’re scars. Horrible, hideous, huge scars. Stop pretending they aren’t.’
He seemed taken aback. ‘Show them to me again,’ he said. ‘Maybe I didn’t see them correctly.’

Jason saw the horror in her face at his suggestion, sympathy filling his heart as he remembered how Karen had felt about her mastectomy scars. He’d had a lot of trouble convincing his wife that he still found her a desirable woman without her breasts. She would cover her scarred chest all the time.
His heart sank as the reality of this situation sank in. This girl was far too vulnerable for him to use as he’d been going to use her. No point in his pussyfooting around with his own less-than-honourable intentions. He had to be straight with himself. His plan had been a rather callous seduction tonight, followed by a strictly sexual affair.
Some women could cope with that kind of thing. But Leah wasn’t one of them.
‘They’re not so bad, Leah,’ Jason said with a soft sigh. ‘I didn’t even notice them at first.’
‘Yeah, right,’ she said, her arms lifting to wrap around herself.
Jason just stood there, not sure what to say and do. ‘So what happened?’ he finally asked.
‘Do you really want to know?’ she threw at him. ‘Yes,’ he returned firmly.
‘I was in a car accident. Two years ago.’
‘And?’
‘And I don’t really want to talk about it. Look, you don’t have to stay and make sympathetic noises. I can see by your body language that you’d rather just cut and run. I understand. Truly. I’ve been there, done that, with another man just like you. I mean…you only want physical perfection, don’t you? Not damaged goods.’
Jason stared at her. She was right. And she was wrong. He didn’t give a damn about the scars. He still found her incredibly beautiful and desirable.
But he did want to cut and run, before he was tempted to totally forget his conscience and exploit her vulnerabilities for all they were worth. Some man—some contemptible bastard—had done a right number on her at some stage. Probably told her she was ugly now, or some such stupid thing.
‘Who was it, Leah?’ he demanded to know.
Her green eyes flashed at him. ‘Who was what?’
‘The man who made you so self-conscious about your scars?’
‘My husband, if you must know.’
‘Husband!’ So that was what she’d been doing all those years. She’d been married.
‘Yes. I was married,’ she confirmed sharply. ‘Once. But never again, I assure you.’
Her bitter assurance was a temptation in itself. After all, he didn’t want to get married again, either. Not because he’d been betrayed. But because he’d loved too much.
That was what this girl needed. To be loved the way he’d loved Karen. Jason knew he didn’t have that kind of love left in him any more. But maybe somewhere there was some man who did, some really decent guy who would show Leah that her life wasn’t over because of one man’s shallowness and cruelty.
If he left her alone, she might find that man. She’d just be wasting her time with him.
When he came towards her, alarm filled her face and her arms tightened around herself.
‘What…what are you doing?’ she said, stumbling back against the sofa when he reached out to cup her face.
‘I’m going to kiss you goodbye,’ he said, and planted a soft peck on her forehead. ‘Not because of your scars, Leah. I won’t let you believe that, because it isn’t true. I still think you are the most beautiful, most desirable girl I have ever met. But because you deserve someone a lot better than me in your life.’
Her eyes swam with tears as she gazed up at him. ‘You…you don’t want me any more.’
His heart actually twisted. ‘I want you now more than ever.’
‘Then show me,’ she begged him.
‘God, but you’re making it hard.’
‘I don’t want you to go,’ she sobbed, and suddenly wrapped her arms around his back, pulling him tightly against her. ‘Please. Please don’t go. Stay with me tonight.’
He jerked back to stare down into her tear-stained face and pleading eyes.
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘I do. I do.’
The desperation in her voice was an even more persuasive force than the feel of her body pressed up to his. And that was pretty persuasive. How could he possibly leave her now? Her self-confidence would be shattered forever if he did.
But even as his mouth began to descend, Jason vowed to himself that tonight was all there would be. One night, he would give her. And himself. He wasn’t that much of a hypocrite that he didn’t recognise he was going to get something out of this, too.
But by morning he would be gone. Gone from her bed and her life. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

24-10-07, 04:02 PM

المشاركة رقم: 22

المعلومات
الكاتب:	Mai Ziyada
اللقب:	ليلاس متالق

البيانات
التسجيل:	Jul 2007
العضوية:	33118
المشاركات:	270
الجنس	أنثى
معدل التقييم:
نقاط التقييم:	152

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كاتب الموضوع : Mai Ziyada المنتدى : الارشيف

CHAPTER NINE
HE STILL WANTS me, Leah cried to herself as his mouth took passionate possession of hers.
No peck on the forehead this time. A real kiss, deep and hungry, flooding her with waves of desire, so hot and strong she thought she might faint with them. She could not get enough of his mouth, but especially his tongue. Each time it slipped past her teeth, she wanted to keep it there, a prisoner of her own passion.
‘No, don’t stop,’ she cried aloud when his head finally lifted.
His wry laughter was reassuring.
‘I don’t think you have to worry about my stopping, beautiful,’ he told her as he swept her up into his arms. ‘I presume this is the way to your bedroom,’ he added as he carried her down the only hallway in her apartment.
She didn’t reply. She was too busy looking up at him with wildly adoring eyes. How handsome he was. Perfect in every way, from his dark, deeply set eyes to his incredibly sexy mouth.
When her right hand lifted to touch his full bottom lip, his step faltered, his eyes glittering as they dropped to hers.
‘If you keep doing that,’ he growled, ‘and looking at me like that, I won’t be able to control myself.’
‘I don’t want you to control yourself,’ she confessed.
His four-letter word shocked her, but only because it excited her beyond her own control.
She almost told him yes, yes, that’s what I want you to do to me. Nothing gentle. Nothing romantic. I want it rough and wild.
‘Tell me you can’t possibly get pregnant tonight,’ came his gruff request. ‘I can’t possibly get pregnant tonight,’ she replied obediently, whilst thinking to herself that it was unlikely. Her period had only just finished a couple of days ago.
But, in truth, she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything but having him make mad passionate love to her.

‘Thank goodness,’ Jason muttered darkly as he carried her into her bedroom.
The room was exactly what he would have expected her bedroom to look like. Soft and pretty and feminine, with pale cream walls and a buttery cream carpet. The brass bed resting against the far wall looked like a genuine antique. High, but not that wide, with a cream lace valance, cream satin quilt and a mound of matching satin and lace pillows resting against the bedhead. The brass-based lamps sitting on the two antique bedside chests were exquisite, their cream shades edged with long drops of crystal. They were both switched on, casting soft circles of lights over the bed.
The realisation that he would soon be on that bed with Leah did little to help Jason’s uncharacteristic lack of control. He’d never been like this with Hilary. Or even Karen, whom he’d loved. Truthfully, he hadn’t ever been like this.
How on earth am I going to make this good for her? he worried as he carried Leah across the room. Already he was painfully erect, his blood charging through his veins at the rate of knots. He ached to throw her on to that virginal-looking quilt and just do it. Without foreplay. Without anything. Just straight into her. Pounding away.
‘Do you have anything on under that robe?’ he asked thickly as he lowered her to her feet beside the bed. She shook her head and swayed against him, the silken tips of her breasts connecting with his stomach.
He sucked in sharply. ‘Hell, Leah, I hope you meant it about wanting me to lose control. Because I’m losing it right now.’
‘Good,’ she said, her glittering green eyes not in any way shy, but suddenly surprisingly bold.
Jason needed no further encouragement.
He yanked the robe back off her shoulders, not bothering with the ties. But when he dragged it down her arms, the damned thing stopped at her waist, trapping her arms by her sides and leaving him staring at the most provocative and perfect breasts he had ever seen.
Lusciously full, they were. High-set, not heavy, with large areolae and the pinkest, pointiest nipples.
He had to touch them. Tug at them. Taste them.
‘Oh, Leah, Leah,’ he groaned as he scooped her up and laid her down in the middle of her quilt, his eyes hot on her as he straightened to stand at the side of the bed.
‘No, don’t move,’ he ordered her when her arms wriggled in the sleeves of the robe, clearly trying to extricate herself. ‘Stay exactly as you are.’
He loved the look of her spread out on that sensuous satin quilt, her lower half covered, but her chest and upper arms totally exposed. The paleness of her naked skin against the red silk was incredibly erotic. So was the richness of the red against the pale cream of the bed.
Only one thing was wrong with the picture. Her hair. It should be down.
Her eyes widened when he bent forward to remove the clip that anchored her hair to the top of her head. He heard her breath quicken, watched her eyes follow him as he stroked her hair down over her shoulders, pulling several strands down over her breasts. But not over her nipples.
When he scraped the hair clip over one, her back arched off the bed, her lips falling apart on a startled gasp.
The sight of her stunningly erect nipples reminded him of his own arousal. But he was too intoxicated by her responses now to think about his own frustrations. He scraped the clip over her other nipple, loving the way her suddenly expanded lungs thrust both her breasts up towards him.
‘You like that,’ he said throatily, then did it again, and again.
Her answer was a series of soft moans.
Finally, however, the torment became his own, and he threw the clip away, busying his hands on his own body, stripping off his clothes and tossing them aside.
He watched her watch him undress, her eyes telling him that his body met with her approval.
Jason had been blessed with a naturally masculine physique, his shape due more to Mother Nature than with working out. But he did swim every day, and did a hundred sit-ups, both of which keep the flab away and his stomach muscles well toned.
Jason had always felt confident of his body, as well as his lovemaking technique. Usually, he took his time, spending ages on foreplay.
Unfortunately, Leah’s eyes staring at him with need sent him right back to where he’d been before he’d started stripping her, desperate to be inside her, driven by a force that was as primal as it was urgent.
Within a flash of being naked, he was with her on the bed, his hands moving with rough caresses over her swollen breasts, his head dipping to take her mouth with a kiss as wild as he was. His lips crushed hers, then drove them apart, his tongue sliding deep, then deeper still. But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. His hand moved down to pull her robe apart, then her legs, and before his brain could catch up with his body he was between her thighs and pushing into her, groaning as her flesh encased his, its soft slickness enveloping his aching hardness.
Her arms might have been imprisoned by her side, but her legs were free to lift and wrap high around his back. Her bottom lifted with it, the angle of her body taking him in even deeper. It was all a bit much for a man who’d been thinking of nothing else all week but Leah Johannsen.
He slowed his rhythm, trying to last, trying desperately to wait for her. But when she started squeezing him with delicious little movements of her muscles, his body gave up the fight and he came with a raw cry, his body shuddering with the force of his release.
For a split second, his male ego threatened to spoil his ecstasy, but then he heard her cry out his name, and felt her flesh tighten around him like a vice.
His sense of triumph was both physical and emotional. Because he hadn’t wanted to be totally selfish. Not tonight. He’d wanted to make it up to her for what that bastard of a husband had done to her. He’d wanted to reassure her that a few scars didn’t mar her desirability as a woman.
And it didn’t.
Peace came to Jason’s body first, leaving him to stare down into her flushed face and watch what his lovemaking had done to her. Her eyes were closed, but her lips were open, panting softly. He felt the last ebbings of her climax. Finally, her legs slipped from around him on a long, voluptuous sigh, and her eyelids fluttered upwards.
He smiled down at her, and she smiled back, her eyes a little embarrassed now, as nice women often were after their first time with a man.
‘I’m sorry I was so quick,’ he said, bracing his arms on either side of her with his elbows whilst he pushed some strands of hair back from her lovely face.
‘You weren’t.’
‘It’s been a while since you’ve been with a man, hasn’t it?’
‘Two years.’
‘Aah. I see.’
The thought occurred to him that it had only been two weeks since he’d been with Hilary.
Men were different creatures to women. No doubt about that.
He was still tempted to tell her that he’d been thinking of nothing else but her all week, that she was something special to him. But that smacked of an emotional involvement, and he wanted to keep this night strictly physical.
‘I’ll take longer next time,’ he said, deliberately curving his mouth into a wicked smile. ‘By the tenth time, you’ll be begging me to stop.’
She blinked up at him. ‘The tenth?’
‘Didn’t I tell you I was a braggart?’
She laughed. ‘No.’
‘A braggart and a bastard.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You will, beautiful. You will.’

‘Leah…’
Leah surfaced slowly. Dreamily. Happily.
‘Mmmm?’
‘It’s morning,’ she heard Jason say through her fog of *******ment. ‘I have to go.’ Leah opened her eyes to find Jason sitting on the bed beside her, fully dressed in the clothes he’d been wearing when he’d arrived the night before.
‘You’re going?’ she said, still a bit sleep-befuddled. ‘But…do you have to rush off? Can’t you stay for breakfast at least? It’s Saturday, you know.’
‘Yes, I know,’ he said, his face somewhat grim.
It was then that it came to her what he was saying. He was going going.
‘I told you last night I wasn’t the man for you,’ he went on. ‘You begged me to stay. So I stayed.’
Leah blinked her surprise. How holier than thou he sounded, as though he’d been forced into staying and accommodating a desperate woman against his better judgement.
‘You certainly did,’ she agreed, her tone tart.
‘I didn’t do anything you didn’t want me to do, Leah,’ he reminded her.
She stared at him, thinking of how she’d given him a lot more than she’d ever given Carl.
There again, he’d given her a lot more than Carl had given her. He’d been incredibly tender and loving that second time. And after that. He certainly wasn’t at all grossed out by her scars. He’d even kissed them on one occasion. And washed them in the shower.
The memory of their shower together sent shivers down her spine. She’d washed him too, during which she’d been absolutely shameless. This time together had been as wild as their first with her feet wrapped around his hips.
Then they went back in the bed, for long and languid lovemaking that had ended with her gradually tipping into sleep.
And now here she was, wide awake and being rejected once more. ‘You said you had a girlfriend till recently,’ she argued, trying to sound calm when inside, desperation was gnawing at her stomach. ‘Why can’t I be your new girlfriend?’
‘You need a man who can love you, Leah. I’m not that man.’
Oh, how it hurt, his saying that he could never love her.
‘It…it’s not because of the scars, is it?’ she heard herself saying in a pitiful voice.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! Leah, how many times do I have to tell you that your scars don’t bother me a bit? Look, if you must know, it’s because of my wife, the one you and everyone else thinks I married for her money.
‘I didn’t,’ he growled. ‘I loved Karen, more than I could have ever thought possible. Watching her die was terrible. No. Unbearable. I thought I would feel relief when she died. Instead, I wanted to die myself.’
‘I’m s…sorry,’ Leah said, stumbling over the words as she tried to cope with the emotions that his heartfelt confession had produced. Jealousy jabbed at her heart, followed by guilt that she’d judged him so harshly. Finally came the dismaying realisation that the feelings his incredible lovemaking had evoked in her last night would never come to fruition.
Leah knew she could easily fall in love with this man. But what was the point, if he could never love her back?
She was way past being a fool to love. Or she thought she was.
‘I’m sorry, too,’ he said, and reached out to touch her softly on the cheek.
Tears pricked at her eyes.
‘Please don’t cry, Leah. Last night was very special. But best we leave it at that.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, bravely blinking back the tears. For a good minute, they maintained an awkward silence, each with their own thoughts.
‘Are you still going to resign on Monday?’ he asked at last.
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘Yes, I think that would be for the best.’
‘You’re right. Of course.’
Leah sighed. It was going to be difficult, living through the two weeks’ notice she had to give.
‘I’ll give you a great reference,’ Jason said.
She glared at him for a moment, but then she laughed. ‘You’d better.’
He looked at her for a longer moment, and she could have sworn she glimpsed true regret in his eyes.
‘I must go,’ he said, and stood up abruptly.
She could hardly bear to look at him. Suddenly, she just wanted him to go. Quickly, before she made a right fool of herself.
His bending to kiss her on the forehead made her cringe. She didn’t want that kind of kiss from him. She wanted the kind he’d given her last night, the hot hungry intimate kind which had made her squirm and moan. She wanted him to stay. Oh…she just wanted him.
‘Just go, for pity’s sake!’ The words burst from her mouth, sounding bitter and angry.
Leah recalled what he’d said the night before about being a braggart and a bastard. How she wished that he was both! But he wasn’t either of them.
She didn’t watch him leave. But she heard him shut the front door. It was a horrible sound.
Leah rolled over into her pillows, and wept.

24-10-07, 04:08 PM

المشاركة رقم: 23

المعلومات
الكاتب:	Mai Ziyada
اللقب:	ليلاس متالق

البيانات
التسجيل:	Jul 2007
العضوية:	33118
المشاركات:	270
الجنس	أنثى
معدل التقييم:
نقاط التقييم:	152

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كاتب الموضوع : Mai Ziyada المنتدى : الارشيف

CHAPTER TEN
JOACHIM STRAIGHTENED HIS bow tie, then knocked on Leah’s bedroom door.
‘It’s seven thirty,’ he called out. ‘The first guests will be arriving soon. I’ll wait for you in the foyer.’
‘I won’t be long,’ his daughter replied.
Joachim had barely set foot on the soft blue rug that warmed the cold marble floor of the spacious foyer when the voice of the security man on the gate came through on the intercom, announcing the arrival of a taxi.
‘Hope it’s not Pollack,’ Joachim muttered.
He was just about to dash back up and collect Leah when she started coming down the stairs.
The sight of her literally took his breath away.
She was wearing black. Not a colour he’d ever seen Leah wear before. She always said she didn’t like black. But against her fair hair, the black was particularly striking. So was the dress.
It was long, and slinky, and sexy. Yet in a very subtle way, with a deceptively modest top, which was loose fitting and gathered in to a high, round collar. There was a slit, however, which ran from neck to waist at the front, providing the occasional glimpse of cleavage as she moved. Her arms and shoulders were bare as well, Leah’s pale skin the perfect foil against the black of the dress.
Her only jewellery was the shoulder-length diamond drop earrings, which Joachim had given her for her twenty-second birthday. They’d cost him a small fortune at the time.
‘You look simply stunning tonight, Leah,’ he complimented when she finally joined him on the rug. ‘I’m glad I meet with your approval.’
Joachim heard the edge in her voice and wondered what it meant. Leah had been in an odd mood ever since she’d arrived at the house around three. She confessed she hadn’t been to visit the children’s wards at Westmead Hospital, as she usually did, claiming she’d woken with a migraine that morning.
Yet she hadn’t looked unwell. If anything, she’d looked better than he’d seen her look in ages. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought she’d been lying to him.
But why would she lie? What had she been doing lately that she felt she couldn’t admit to?
‘Is that dress new?’ he asked as he opened the door in anticipation of his first dinner guest—or guests—reaching it. Not Pollack, Joachim saw with relief, but the Hawkinses, long-time friends of the family. Nigel was an orthopaedic surgeon, Jessica his nice but slightly mousy wife. They’d alighted from the taxi, but were still at the bottom of the wide stone steps that led up to the front porch.
‘No,’ Leah replied. ‘Carl bought it for me on our honeymoon. He thought it looked sexy on me.’
Joachim had to agree with his ex son-in-law. His daughter’s dress might have worried a father if he was of the narrow-minded, or prudish, kind.
Joachim wasn’t. He’d always believed beautiful women like Leah were born to be made love to. And to have children.
But not with any man.
Joachim wanted his next son-in-law to be a man of substance, and character.
He’d had some lingering doubts about Jason Pollack, despite Isabel’s voice urging him on, so he’d made a few discreet enquiries on the Monday morning before issuing the dinner invitation, and now felt reassured that Jason Pollack wasn’t a fortune hunter, despite the rumours about his first marriage.
His source of information—a journalist friend at a well-known newspaper—gave Pollack a glowing recommendation, both professionally and personally.
Still, if he didn’t impress Leah tonight, Joachim resolved to scout around for some other likely candidates to bring into his daughter’s life. He wasn’t about to let his lovely daughter waste herself, just because her first husband had been less than a man.
‘You’ve done something different with your hair,’ he said, noticing when Leah turned away slightly to smooth the long tight skirt over her hips. It was brushed straight back from her face and had been blow-dried dead straight, a shining blonde curtain falling down her back. ‘It looks sexy like that.’
She glanced up at him, her glittering green eyes reminding him of Isabel when she was excited about something. ‘Do you mind my looking sexy?’
‘Not at all. But I thought you didn’t want my mystery guest making a pass at you.’
‘Is he capable?’ she quipped back.
‘Any man is capable of a pass. Aah…here’s Nigel and Jessie…’
Leah rolled her eyes, then put her mind to playing the role her father wanted her to play for tonight.
Her mother had taught her well how to be a gracious hostess. Leah automatically knew the right things to say to please, plus how to accept a compliment without blushing or stammering.
But she had a moment’s worry when Nigel kept staring at her chest. Perhaps she shouldn’t have given into the impulse to wear this dress tonight. And to leave off her bra.
But she’d wanted to feel her bare breasts against the silk lining of the dress. Wanted to remember what Jason had done to them last night.
Because that was all she was ever going to have of him.
Memories.
Several couples arrived in quick succession, one after the other, all of whom Leah had met before. Her father’s stockbroking partners and their wives. His accountant and his wife. His solicitor and his current partner.
A local politician and his second, much-younger wife made their entrance a few minutes later, soon to be followed by a quite famous television actor with his current live-in lady, along with his agent, a woman Leah’s father knew from way back.
Leah guided them all smoothly into the elegant sunken living room, which ran across the back of the house and where a white-coated waiter circled continuously with trays full of pre-dinner drinks. Some couples chose to sit together on the brocade-covered sofas that Leah’s mother had been particularly proud of. Others wandered out onto the back terrace to stand by the pool and to admire the view of the harbour, which stretched out before them at the bottom of the garden.
A full moon shone high in the clear night sky, bathing everything in its bright light. The evening was quite warm, which was just as well, Leah thought, given her choice of clothes and lack of underwear.
By eight-fifteen, everyone, it seemed, had made an appearance. Everyone except her father’s mystery guest. Leah kept mingling as a good hostess should, sipping champagne as she made small talk with her father’s friends and colleagues. She was actually enjoying herself more than she’d thought she would. She was even becoming a little curious over their missing guest. Who was he? she began to wonder.
Someone who thought himself important enough to be late.
‘Maybe your man’s stood you up?’ Leah murmured somewhat mischievously to her father as she passed by him on her way to the kitchen to check if everything was ready for dinner. Her father might have blind faith in catering companies, but Leah’s mother had always said an overseeing eye was necessary for a successful dinner party.
The doorbell rang before she could leave the room.
She turned to glance at her father who smiled, made his excuses and came over to her, taking her elbow and shepherding her back towards the front door.
‘Must be our man now,’ he said on their way. ‘Everyone else is here.’
‘He must be seriously rich to have you this eager. But not to worry. I’m ripe and ready for the old coot. Bring him on, I say!’
Her father laughed. ‘I’m so glad to see you’ve finally recovered your sense of humour. But I think you’re in for a surprise.’
‘Nothing you do would ever surprise me, Daddy,’ she replied, lifting her rather tight skirt a little as she mounted the two marble steps that connected the living room with the foyer. ‘Mum turned a blind eye to your naughtinesses. And your controlling ways. But I always knew what kind of man you were.’
‘Did you now?’
He slanted a smile at her and Leah smiled back. Her father was a bit of a rogue, but a charming and lovable one.
Leah was thinking how much she loved him—despite everything—when he opened the door and there, before her, was the last man she expected to see tonight.
Jason Pollack, dressed in a superb black dinner jacket and looking more devastatingly handsome than she’d ever seen him. She fairly gaped.
But if she was shocked, so was he.
‘Leah!’ he blurted out. ‘Good God.’

‘Leah?’ Joachim repeated, staring first at Jason Pollack, then at his daughter. ‘You already know each other?’ he asked her.
‘We…er…we met at B…Beville Holdings this week.’
Joachim had never heard his daughter stammer in her life. Or blush the way she was blushing at this moment.
Joachim was no fool. He knew at once that more had gone on between this pair than a simple meeting at work. Intuition told him that Leah’s new boss was the reason she had been acted strangely today.
‘You never mentioned it,’ Joachim said, playing devil’s advocate.
‘Didn’t I?’ came her evasive reply.
Joachim became aware that his guest was glowering at both him and her with dark suspicion in his eyes. It occurred to him suddenly that Pollack had no idea Leah was his daughter. Clearly, he’d jumped to the mistaken conclusion that she held a very different but still intimate role in Joachim’s life.
That of mistress.
And he looked as jealous as sin.
Joachim felt pleased as punch at this development. But he thought it best to clarify things, post-haste.
‘Leah is my daughter, Mr Pollack,’ he pronounced proudly, sliding a possessive around her slender waist. ‘My only child and the apple of my eye.’
Pollack’s deeply set eyes betrayed definite relief, followed by puzzlement. He frowned at Leah, who was still blushing furiously. ‘But you go by the name of Johannsen,’ he said to Leah, almost accusingly. ‘Not Bloom.’
‘Her ex-husband’s name,’ Joachim informed him when Leah couldn’t seem to find her tongue. A most unusual occurrence, lately. ‘Rich as Croesus, but a cur of a man. Leah is well rid of him, aren’t you, sweetheart? But let’s not talk of unpleasant things tonight. Dinner will be served shortly. Just enough time for Leah to get you a pre-dinner drink.’
Joachim removed his hand from her waist and leant it lightly on her shoulder, giving her an indulgent smile at the same time. ‘I’ll leave Mr Pollack in your good hands, shall I, Leah, whilst I check things with the chef.’

Bloom walked off, leaving Jason feeling more rattled than he’d ever felt in his life.
He hadn’t been going to come tonight. He hadn’t felt like socialising, especially with people he didn’t know. It had been Karen’s voice in his head saying that it was best not to be alone when you were troubled over something that had driven him out of the house.
So at the last moment he’d thrown on his tux and ordered a taxi, telling himself—as he had earlier in the week—that at least the wine and food would be good.
Seeing Leah standing next to Bloom like that had given him a dreadful shock. For a few stomach-churning moments, he’d entertained appalling thoughts about their relationship. Thank heavens Bloom turned out to be her father, or he didn’t know what he might have done.
Jason hadn’t realised till that moment just how primal his feelings for Leah had become. One night spent together, and he already thought of her as his, and his alone. As he stared at her, his mind began stripping her of that far too sexy black dress. He saw her as he’d seen her last night, without a stitch on, her beautiful body stretched out before him, to do with as he pleased.
He’d been trying not to think of her like that all day, telling himself he’d done the right thing to leave things at a one-night stand. But now here she was, tormenting him with her beauty once more.
Still, the pieces of the puzzle that made up Leah Johannsen were finally slotting into place. She was a rich man’s daughter. She’d been married to a rich man. Now he understood why she’d had no work record till recently.
‘I had no idea you were coming here tonight,’ she said agitatedly. ‘You have to believe me.’
‘I do believe you,’ he returned. If she’d expected him, she wouldn’t have looked so embarrassed.
‘This is all my father’s doing,’ she said, shaking her head, the action setting those incredible earrings swaying and sparkling.
‘Yes, I can see that.’
Her eyes flashed with frustration. ‘Daddy likes to think he knows what’s best for me. He’s obviously matchmaking, despite my having told him just last Sunday that I wasn’t interested in getting married again. Or falling in love again, for that matter!’
‘You’re not?’ Jason wished she’d told him that this morning.
‘No,’ she said quite firmly. ‘I’m not. Look, the only reason I’m here tonight is because my father asked me to. He said he needed me to sit next to some billionaire he’d invited to dinner and wanted to impress. He refused to tell me your name, though he cleverly let me assume that you were some ageing tycoon whose investment account he wanted to secure. He knew, if I knew your real identity, I wouldn’t have agreed to help him.’ ‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m not into wealthy playboy types who think they’re God’s gift to women,’ she threw at him, her delicately pointed chin lifting the way it had that first day in the car park.
Jason opened his mouth to deny he was a playboy. But then closed it again. He supposed he was, in a way. Hilary would certainly describe him as such.
‘And please don’t throw last night in my face,’ she added angrily. ‘You caught me at a weak moment. Trust me when I say it won’t happen again.’
Jason looked deep into her defiant green eyes, then down at the outline of her stunningly erect nipples before deciding that the lady doth protest too much. Her body language spoke different words to those she was mouthing.
His own body responding to the still-smouldering desire he sensed in hers, Jason wondered how on earth he was going to get through this evening without misbehaving.
‘I’m glad you’ve come over to my way of thinking,’ he returned drily. He’d have no hope of containing his own desire if she indicated she’d be willing for a repeat performance. ‘Now, how about that drink your father promised?’

26-10-07, 05:10 PM

المشاركة رقم: 24

المعلومات
الكاتب:	Mai Ziyada
اللقب:	ليلاس متالق

البيانات
التسجيل:	Jul 2007
العضوية:	33118
المشاركات:	270
الجنس	أنثى
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نقاط التقييم:	152

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كاتب الموضوع : Mai Ziyada المنتدى : الارشيف

CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘WHAT A LOVELY room.’
Leah flashed Jason a resentful glance over the rim of her crystal flute. She didn’t want to stand here next to him, sipping champagne and pretending that the whole evening was not going to be a total disaster. She didn’t want to make small talk with him. She wanted to get out of here more than anything she’d ever wanted, except perhaps this man.
She looked at him hard again and wished he wasn’t so attractive. And so decent. If decent was the right word. Maybe he’d just been protecting himself this morning from a girl he decided might become a neurotic cling-on in his life. Clearly, emotional complications weren’t on Jason’s agenda.
Sex was fine. But nothing more.
Leah wished she could have hidden that she wanted more.
‘You can handle this, Leah,’ Jason said softly, as if reading her mind. ‘You can handle just about anything, from what I’ve seen. Don’t let your father’s manipulations bother you. They’re irrelevant. I won’t be pushed into doing anything I don’t want to do. And neither will you. We have minds of our own.’
She stared at him, both impressed and flattered. She really was much weaker than he believed. Around him, anyway.
‘And I genuinely like this room,’ he added, smiling at her with a warm smile that made her want to weep.
Why couldn’t she have married a man like this, instead of Carl? Why couldn’t she have met Jason first, before his wife stole his heart and left him without the ability—or the desire—to love again?
‘It was my mother’s favourite room,’ she replied, her heart lurching a little. Am I right in presuming that your mother has passed away?’
‘She…she died in the same car accident that gave me the scars.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said with true sympathy in his voice and face. ‘I never actually knew my mother. She died when I was born. But Dad and I were very close. He passed away when I was in my twenties, so I know what it feels like to lose a much-loved parent.’
‘Not a day goes by that I don’t miss Mum terribly.’
‘I know what you mean,’ he muttered. ‘You just can’t get used to the fact that they’re not there any more.’
Leah looked at his bleak eyes and suspected he was now thinking about his wife. Thinking about her and missing her. Every day of his life.
Oh, God.
‘Tell me about your mother.’
A wistful sigh whispered from Leah’s lips. ‘She was a lovely sweet woman, too sweet in some ways. A great wife and mother. She had a wonderfully calming effect in the house, and on Daddy. Everyone loved her. Unfortunately, she was a dreadful driver…’
‘Do you look like her, or your father?’
‘People say I’m the spitting image of Mum. But not in nature,’ she added. ‘I’m not quite as amenable as Mum was.’
Jason smiled. ‘No kidding.’
Leah felt herself bristle. She opened her mouth to make some snappy reply when her father announced that dinner was ready.
Leah glared at her father as she and Jason walked past on their way into the dining room.
‘I want a quiet word with you,’ she bit out.
‘It won’t be during dinner,’ came his smiling answer. ‘The seating arrangement is not conducive.’
understatement. The regimented place names put her father at one end of the huge mahogany dining table, and Leah at the other end, almost shouting distance away. Jason had been placed on Leah’s immediate right, with Nigel’s wife on her left, a shy woman who rarely said a word. No doubt a deliberate ploy on her father’s part.
The first two courses were an absolute trial, not because she was forced to talk to Jason and Jason alone, but because he cleverly drew Jessica out of her usual shell till she was fairly sparkling with wit and previously untapped charm.
Jealousy consumed Leah as she watched all the women at the table—not just Jessica—flick admiring glances towards Jason. She wanted to scream at them that they couldn’t have him. That he was hers.
But of course he wasn’t.
The trouble was, the memory of his lovemaking was still pleasurably, painfully sharp. She could almost feel his hands on her breasts. Her stomach. Her bottom. Her body literally began to burn as her mind relived that torrid mating in the shower. She could hear her cries echoing against the tiled walls, feel his swollen sex buried deep inside hers.
‘Your father’s wines are superb.’
‘What?’ Her head jerked around at his voice, her face flushing when her eyes met his.

Jason was an expert at reading body language. When he’d first started out in sales, his take-home pay had depended on it. There was no doubt in his mind that Leah still wanted him, regardless of what she’d claimed earlier.
His resolve not to sleep with her again shattered under the force of his own immediate and intense desire. Dessert arrived, a wicked-looking chocolate concoction that had most of the women at the table protesting—though only half-heartedly. Jason used their momentary distraction to lean across the corner of the table towards Leah.
‘Come home with me tonight,’ he invited softly before he could think better of it.
Her nostrils flared as she sucked in sharply, her eyes blinking wide in shock on him.
‘Please,’ he added, his own eyes fixed firmly on her stunned face.
Leah just stared at him.
Yes, was the obvious answer. It was what she was wanted more than anything. So why did she hesitate? Why did she feel the urge to punish him for rejecting her this morning?
In that moment, Leah began to understand why pride was one of the seven deadly sins, and not a virtue as some people imagined. It could be perverse, and very self-destructive.
‘So what’s happened to change your mind?’ she snapped, without thinking who might hear.
Fortunately, everyone was busy chatting away to someone else. And also fortunately, Jason didn’t take offence. He just smiled at her, as though he’d expected this reaction.
‘You happened again, Leah,’ he said quietly, his eyes gleaming with seductive force. ‘Along with that dress. I’m just a man, you know, not a saint.’
‘Oh.’ His honesty was as irresistibly attractive as he was.
‘Is that a yes?’
She nodded, suddenly unable to say a word. Her mouth had gone as dry as the Sahara. She stared at him again, drowning in his dark, sexy eyes and dying for this dinner to be over so tonight could begin. The impatience of her desire astounded Leah. Was it just his lovemaking she was craving? Or the man himself?
Impossible to separate them. The man and his lovemaking. They came together, as they had come together, last night, not once but several times.
This had to be why Trish had kept going back to Jim, even though she knew there was no future with him. Because the sex was great.
Leah couldn’t imagine anything, however, being as perfect or as powerful as what she’d shared with Jason last night. How was she going to feel when he called it quits a second time?
And he would. If not tomorrow morning, then eventually.
Don’t think about that, she told herself as she dropped her eyes to the dessert and picked up her spoon.
Leah was partial to chocolate of any kind. But her taste buds seemed to have gone on strike, her focus on nothing but what was going to happen later tonight after she went home with Jason.
Slowly, she lifted her head and gazed down the long table to where her father was enthusiastically attacking his dessert. Perhaps feeling her eyes on him, he stopped with his dessert fork mid-air and looked back across the expanse of mahogany.
The smile that curved her lips was full of irony. Whatever her father had planned for tonight, it certainly wasn’t for his daughter to go home with his mystery guest.
Clearly, her father was on the lookout for a new son-in-law, not a new client.
Joachim Bloom believed in love and marriage and family. Even before Leah married the first time, he’d expressed the wish for a grandson, his one regret over his own marriage being that they hadn’t been able to have more children. Leah would have liked to give her father what he wanted. This time. Unfortunately, the man sitting beside her was never going to marry her, or fall in love with her. He certainly didn’t want her having his child. He’d made his position quite clear, both this morning and tonight. His offer of another night together was a strictly sexual one.
Leah knew her only chance of having any kind of relationship with Jason, as opposed to just one more night, lay in her ability to convince him that this was all she wanted, too.
Could she do that? Would he believe her?
It was a plus that she’d already revealed tonight that she didn’t want to get married again. All she had to do was slip in somewhere that she didn’t want to fall in love again, either.
A shudder ran through Leah. She’d never been all that good a liar.
‘You don’t like chocolate?’ Jason enquired.
Leah hardly dared look at him, lest he see the machinations going on in her mind. ‘I seem to have lost my appetite.’
‘Just as long as you’re not dieting.’
‘I’m not. When I’m upset or excited, I simply can’t eat.’
‘And are you upset over something?’ he asked softly, the implication behind his clever question drawing her eyes to his.
‘No.’
‘When I’m upset or excited, I eat all the more,’ he said, his dessert already gone.
‘And are you upset over something?’ she heard herself ask on a husky whisper.
‘No,’ he mouthed in reply.
Leah swallowed. How on earth was she going to bear the rest of the evening? But her father’s dinner parties were never rushed affairs.
After dessert, coffee and cognac would be served back in the living room, along with large cheese and fruit platters. Finally, bottles of his prized port would come out. No one would be expected to leave till midnight, at least. No one ever left Joachim Bloom’s dinner parties early. No one ever wanted to. Except when they were desperate to be dragged by their sexy new boss into bed and kept there.

By the time everyone rose from the dining table, Leah began thinking about places she could take Jason to where she could at least be alone with him, where they could talk naturally and not in hushed whispers or coded messages, where he might kiss her and touch her and maybe even…
‘I’m taking Jason down to the boathouse to look at your cruiser, Daddy,’ she said to her father as soon as the time came to leave the table. ‘He’s interested in buying a boat. You did say you wanted to sell it, didn’t you?’
‘But only if it’s a bargain,’ Jason piped up by her side, not batting an eyelid at this invention of Leah’s. What a clever man he was. What a gorgeous, clever, cooperative man!
Leah’s father gave a mock sigh. ‘I see I’ll have to teach my daughter the art of negotiation. Never show your hand, Leah. Make people think you don’t want to give them what they want. That the way, isn’t it, Jason?’
‘Most of the time,’ Jason replied with a brilliant poker face. ‘There are occasions, however, when it is more…effective…to let a person know what you want. Don’t you agree?’
‘Indeed I do,’ her father said, glancing from Jason to Leah and smiling a rather smug smile. ‘Off you go then, Leah, and show this young man my boat. But leave the final negotiation of any sale to me.’
Jason took her hand the moment they were alone on the terrace, pulling her off to one side into the shadows and pressing her up against a side wall.
‘This is what you want, isn’t it?’ he muttered just before his mouth collided with hers.
The kiss was long and wet and wild, leaving Leah’s lips bruised and her heart thundering in her chest. Who knew what she would have allowed then and there if he hadn’t taken her hand again and started pulling her past the pool towards the garden beyond.
She didn’t say a word during their silent journey down the moonlit pathway that led to the boathouse. What was there to be said even if she was capable of saying it?
‘Is it locked?’ Jason threw at her when they neared the boathouse.
‘Yes. But I know where the key is.’
‘I’m sure you do.’
He sounded angry, she realised. Either that or just as impatient as she was.
‘You’re not angry with me, are you?’ she asked when they reached the boathouse door.
He swung her round, then yanked her hard against him.
‘Angry with myself, more like it,’ he ground out, and kissed her again, this time for even longer. By the time his head lifted, she’d forgotten the thread of their conversation.
‘The key,’ he demanded. ‘Where’s the damned key?’
Her hands were shaking as she reached round behind a nearby downpipe and removing a small black magnetised box, sliding it open and retrieving the key.
Jason took it from her and jammed it into the lock. The hinges creaked a little as he pushed open the door.
‘Is there a light in here somewhere?’
‘Do we have to it turn it on?’
‘We do, if I’m to look at this boat.’
‘You mean you actually do want to look at the boat?’
‘Only the part where the bunks are.’
‘Oh.’
She turned on the light.
The boathouse was just large enough to house her father’s cruiser, a sleek white vessel, which did have sleeping quarters below deck. The sight of her mother’s name painted on the side, however, had a dampening effect on Leah’s passion. So did the musty smell inside the boathouse. When she heard something rodent-like scurrying beneath some empty cartons piled up in a corner, she squealed and grabbed Jason’s arm.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I…I think I heard a mouse. Or maybe a rat.’
‘A rat…’
‘Yes. I hate rats,’ she said, and shuddered.
Jason almost told her that she was mistaken. She liked rats. She’d married one, hadn’t she? And she was about to have an affair with another one.
After all, nothing had changed since this morning. He still couldn’t offer her anything more than his body.
Unfortunately, the state of Jason’s body refused to totally let him change his mind about taking her again. But he could wait a little longer. He didn’t have to do it here, in a wretched boathouse.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, grabbing her hand and dragging her back outside into the moonlight.
‘Go where?’
He locked the door and put the key back in its box. ‘I’m taking you home to my nicely air-conditioned and rodent-free apartment.’
‘Right now, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘But the dinner party isn’t over.’
‘It is for us.’

26-10-07, 05:14 PM

المشاركة رقم: 25

المعلومات
الكاتب:	Mai Ziyada
اللقب:	ليلاس متالق

البيانات
التسجيل:	Jul 2007
العضوية:	33118
المشاركات:	270
الجنس	أنثى
معدل التقييم:
نقاط التقييم:	152

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كاتب الموضوع : Mai Ziyada المنتدى : الارشيف

CHAPTER TWELVE
‘HOW ON EARTH did you manage that?’ Leah asked as the taxi sped from Vaucluse to the city.
Jason curved an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. ‘Manage what?’
‘Manage to get me out of there in double-quick time with my father’s approval.’
‘Simple. While you were in the powder room, I told him the truth.’
‘You told him I’d be spending the night with you?’
‘Not in so many words. I said I was taking you on to a nightclub. Your father’s an intelligent man. He doesn’t have to have everything spelled out for him.’
‘But you don’t understand. I wasn’t going back to my place after the dinner party. I was going to stay the night at home. I usually do every Saturday night. My father will expect to see me at breakfast.’
‘You’ll have to give him a call tomorrow morning then, won’t you? Tell him you didn’t come home and won’t be down for breakfast.’
Leah groaned.
‘Leah, darling.’ Jason’s voice was firm. ‘You’re a beautiful, twenty-six-year-old divorcée living in Sydney in the twenty-first century. Your father realises you have a sex life.’
‘But I haven’t,’ she denied. ‘I mean…last night was the first time since…since…’
‘Yes. I know that. But that was only because you were self-conscious about your scars. You’re over that nonsense now, aren’t you?’
‘Am I?’
‘Absolutely.’ And, as if to prove it, he slid his hand up under her dress and caressed the ridges which crisscrossed her left thigh. Leah’s first reaction was to stiffen, but, gradually, she melted under his gentle touch, her breath quickening when his fingers moved further up her thigh to press against the already damp satin of her black G-string.
The contact of his fingertips against electrified nerve-endings twisted her stomach into knots, her belly tightening as the tension began to build down there. If he kept doing what he was doing, she would come, right there, in the back of the taxi.
Her eyes darted to the back of the driver’s head, then at the tall buildings flying past. She sucked in sharply and tried to think of other things.
‘See?’ he murmured into her right ear. ‘You’re cured. And we’re here.’
The taxi lurching to a halt at the curb coincided with his hand abandoning her.
A low moan of frustration escaped her lips before she could stop it. She looked at him with desperate eyes, and he dropped a light kiss on her mouth.
‘Not much longer to wait,’ he murmured before climbing out of the taxi first. Once on the pavement, he turned to help her out on to her feet, then paid the driver through the front window.
Unfortunately, to do so, he had to let go of her hands.
How did she manage to stand up all by herself? Her bones had gone to water and her head was spinning out into the stratosphere.
By the time the taxi sped off, Leah was teetering on her high heels. Jason caught her against him as she swayed.
‘You drank far too much wine over dinner,’ he said, holding her tightly against him as he ushered her into the tower like building.
Had she? She couldn’t remember. Dinner had become a bit of a blur.
The security guards behind the reception desk waved to Jason on his way past, but he just nodded to them, then steered her into one of the empty lifts in the far corner of the massive foyer and inserted his key card.
‘You’re not going to fall asleep on me, are you?’ he asked a bit worriedly during the lift ride upwards.
‘I certainly hope not.’
He smiled. ‘That’s my girl.’
She stared up at him and thought how much she’d like to be his girl.
‘And what does that look mean?’ he chided, tipping her chin up with his fingertips.
‘Nothing. Please kiss me.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Jason was happy to do just that, happy to take her mouth and let desire obliterate the qualms that kept surfacing whenever he was with this girl. Soon, he wasn’t thinking of anything much except the need to have her in his arms once more.
The lift slid to a smooth halt on the top floor of the tower, the doors opening straight into his luxury penthouse apartment.
But neither of them had eyes for anything but each other. Jason couldn’t wait any longer, swinging her around against the wall and pinning her there with his body. His hands clasped her head and his kisses turned savage.
The need for air finally forced him to wrench his mouth away. But there would be no slowing down. No waiting this time.
He didn’t undress her, or himself. He just yanked open his zipper and lifted her dress. Her panties gave way with a ripping sound and then he was there, wedging himself between her legs and pushing up into her deliciously ready body.
Once safely anchored, he straightened, then let the dress fall, his hands lifting to cup her face.
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said thickly, aware that his rough penetration had stretched her up on to her toes.
‘You’re not.’
‘But I might,’ he said with a grimace. His passion for her had been uncontrollable from the start, appealing to his dark side, making him forget all common sense and decency.
‘No, no.’ She shook her head violently against his hands. ‘I’m fine. Please. Just do it, Jason.’
Her urgency stirred his dark side ever further. As Jason began to pump up into her, he vowed to make her want him like this all the time. He would keep her here with him for the rest of the weekend, making love to her over and over till having him inside her was as natural to her as breathing. He’d make her crave sex as she had never craved it before. And with the craving would come complete surrender to his will.
By Monday morning, there would be no more talk of resigning. She would be totally at his beck and call, both at work and here, every single night. She’d be his, in every way. Unable to say no. Every man’s fantasy come true.
‘Mine,’ he muttered against her mouth when she splintered apart. His own climax swiftly followed, Jason hoisting her up on to his hips whilst his flesh was still pulsing inside of hers.
Her forehead flopped against his shoulder, her arms winding up around his neck. A sigh of satisfaction whispered at the base of his throat.
‘That was incredible,’ she murmured as he carried down towards the master bedroom. ‘You’re incredible.’
Leah felt his arms stiffen around her. His step even faltered for a moment. She knew she’d have to say something very quickly to redress the damage she’d just done. If not, tonight would become just another one-night stand.
‘You’re a much better lover than Carl, you know,’ she went on hurriedly, lifting her head to throw what she hoped was a saucy smile up at him.
He laughed, which was good. ‘So good sex matters to you?’
‘I was one of those romantically foolish females who imagined true love did the trick for them. And then you came along and proved me wrong.’
His smile had an odd edge to it. ‘We aim to please.’
‘I wish I’d met someone like you sooner.’
Now he ground to a total halt. ‘What do you mean by that?’
Her shrug was magnificently nonchalant. ‘You know. Someone whose only priority is having a good time, and has the know-how to deliver it. We’re perfect for each other, Jason. You don’t want love and marriage, and neither do I. I’ve been there, done that, and I’m not in a hurry to go there again.’
Leah could not tell if he believed her, or not.
‘Which reminds me,’ she raced on. ‘You’re going to have to start using condoms soon. This weekend should be safe, but, in a day or two, we’ll be entering danger territory.’
The horror on his face underlined how much Jason didn’t want consequences. Or commitment. Or complications.
‘I’d forgotten all about that! Damn, but you do make me lose it, Leah.’
Her smile carried some degree of satisfaction. ‘Do I?’
‘You know you do. I can’t seem to get enough of you.’
‘Mmm. Yes. I’m beginning to feel the evidence of that for myself,’ she purred. ‘So what do you want to do about it?’
‘First things first. As much I like this dress on you, I prefer you with out it. And those earrings will have to go. I might end up swallowing one and be charged with grand larceny. Then we’re going to share a spa bath.’
‘And after that?’
His dark eyes glittered. ‘Don’t you worry your pretty little head about the wheres and wherefores of tonight,’ he said as he carried her into a bedroom that looked like a photo spread in a glossy magazine for what a bachelor’s bedroom should be like. ‘I like to be the boss in the bedroom as well as at work.’
Leah could see that already. But she didn’t mind. She found his take-charge attitude exciting. Carl had never made love to her anywhere but in bed.
Leah realised now that her husband had been a lazy lover. And lacking in passion.
There again, he’d never really loved her, had he? She’d meant little more to him that one of the multimillion-dollar paintings he bought and displayed so proudly to everyone. She’d been a prized possession to show off. A status symbol. Joachim Bloom’s daughter.
Jason didn’t care that she was Joachim Bloom’s daughter. He’d wanted her when he thought she was just a working girl.
They stood in the middle of the room. Their bodies were pressed tightly together. Leah wriggled her hips against Jason, making him gasp.
‘Do it to me again, Jason,’ she said, hardly recognising the husky voice that came out of her mouth. ‘On that big bad bed of yours. The bath can wait. I can’t.’
He laughed. ‘I’m the one supposed to be doing the seducing around here.’
‘Then hurry up and seduce me again.’
‘I thought I told you I like to be the boss.’
‘I forgot.’
‘I’ll forgive you this once,’ he said as he laid her carefully back across the black-and-white jungle-print spread. Leah gasped with surprise when he pushed her long tight skirt upwards till it enveloped her upper half—and her head—in darkness.
Leah had never known anything so erotic. She could not see him. But she could feel him, as he pushed into her and then slid in and out, filling her, then leaving her feeling momentarily frustrated as he pulled back. His stroke was slow and strong, teasing her, pleasing her. That delicious tension began to build again, catching at her breath, making her muscles tighten around him.
She bit her bottom lip when he took hold of her hips and picked up his rhythm. She could hear him now as well as feel him. His breath was ragged, his fingertips quite brutal as they dug into her flesh. She’d be bruised in the morning, but she didn’t care.
He was like some wild beast, holding her hard against him while he shuddered into her.
And then he was gone, leaving her lying there, with her dress still up over her face, her arms up-stretched, her legs apart, her body spent.
She heard water running, but still could not move. Finally, he came back to her and with gentle hands removed her dress. Not just from her face, but from her whole body.
She looked up to see that he was naked, too. Naked and smiling. When he stretched out beside her and started playing with her breasts, Leah realised that she wasn’t as spent as she thought she was.
‘I’m running us that spa bath,’ he murmured, deserting her nipples to remove her earrings. ‘Do you want to give your father a call tonight?’ he asked as he dropped them one by one on his glass-topped bedside table. ‘You could warn him you won’t be back.’
‘No, I…I don’t think so. I’ll call him in the morning.’
‘He won’t be worried, you know. This is what you said he wanted. You and me together.’
‘I still can’t believe you were his mystery guest. But he read some article about you in last Sunday’s paper. It seemed to impress him. He showed it to me.’
‘It didn’t impress you though, did it? You weren’t at all impressed when we met on Monday.’
‘You’ve impressed me now that I’ve gotten to know you. Biblically speaking, that is.’
His hand went back to her breast, his expression speculative as he played with her nipple some more. ‘Is this all you want me from me, Leah?’ he asked when she gave a small moan of pleasure. ‘You won’t start wanting more, will you?’
Leah’s heart twisted. She ached to throw at him that of course she would. She already did. But sex was all he was offering. So she said, ‘That, and companionship. I’ve been very lonely since my divorce. I’m sure you can manage to deliver both, can’t you?’
‘No trouble. But I’ll have to go condom shopping tomorrow. I do have a couple in my wallet, which I put there for emergencies. And possibly one or two in the bathroom somewhere. But with you, beautiful,’ he said, tweaking her nipple again. ‘I’m going to need some serious restocking.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ she said with what she hoped was a sexy smile.
Leah knew full well that she was risking heartbreak by having an affair with Jason. But to give him up was out of the question. She simply could not resist the wild abandon that he evoked in her, and the sexual pleasure he gave her.
Already she was looking forward to that bath, to washing him all over, and being washed in return.
‘You’d better check that bath,’ she said. ‘We don’t want a flood.’
‘Let’s check it together,’ he suggested, and scooped her up into his arms.