No man could compare to this one. He was unique, charismatic, hedonistic in his approach to sexuality.
She watched in awe as he removed his own clothes, peeling off his evening suit and shirt to reveal a body as perfect and faultless as any Rodin sculpture. Smooth bronzed skin, dark curly hair that massed his chest, narrowing down his stomach in a column of hazy blackness to his groin. The need to touch was overpowering but part of his ritual was to wait, to suspend the feeling-need till the moment was right.
Eventually he stretched his hands out to her and she took them and slowly he drew her into his arms, drawing her into his power, into the heady realms of a world she had never known before.
He carried her to the sensual bed, and laid her down. His tongue explored, lightly at first, and then his urgency powered them both to a fierce eroticism that swam them into a haze of white-hot passion.
Her breasts ached with her need, her heart pounded fiercely with the depth of that need. Her body wasn’t her own. It floated mystically under his touch then rose in flames of desire as he entered her for the first time, driving hard into her, groaning her name over and over till it became a primeval incantation deep in his throat.
Their need for each other was insatiable that first night. They made love till dawn then made love again. They slept and murmured words of love to each other, lay in each other’s arms wondering at all that was happening to them. Later, they rose, showered, drank sweet thick Turkish coffee, talked quietly, made love on the soft leather sofa downstairs in the lounge.
The hours ran into days and Gemma forgot work and all that passed for her life before Felipe. They were both cocooned in their ethereal, perfumed lovenest, oblivious to outside intervention. Then Bianca arrived. Rich, angry and beautiful Bianca.
‘You were supposed to pick me up from the airport, Felipe!’ she cried when Felipe answered the door to her one morning. ‘Pay the taxi, will you?’ she ordered, thrusting her way into the house.
Gemma stood at the top of the elegant spiral staircase watching this scene below, too afraid to move, her heart racing. It didn’t stop racing when Felipe urged her down to meet his cousin who had just flown in from New York.
Cousin—it didn’t help somehow. Bianca was exotically beautiful, so was Felipe, and, cousins or not, the look Bianca gave Felipe was one of raw anger, and it had little to do with arriving at Heathrow and having to hail a taxi to St John’s Wood.
Felipe was unaware of his cousin’s hostility to Gemma; men often didn’t see what was obvious to another woman. But Gemma registered every look, every adverse vibration the girl gave off. She was younger than Gemma but exuded that mature air common to women who were beautiful, rich and spoilt.
‘So this is your excuse for not meeting me, is it?’ She flicked her eyes frostily over Gemma and slid out of her feather-weight cashmere coat, letting it fall carelessly over the sofa. ‘I might have known. No thought of me sweating it out at the airport, hanging around waiting——’
‘I forgot,’ Felipe interjected with a tolerant smile.
‘Well, damn you! I need sleep. I’m exhausted. Don’t wake me.’ With that she swept upstairs, slamming the door of the guest bedroom behind her.
‘I’d better go,’ Gemma murmured uncomfortably.
‘Like hell you will!’ Felipe grated, pulling her into his arms.
‘Don’t, Felipe, not with——’
‘Not with Bianca in the house? Why so suddenly prudish?’
‘I’m not!’
‘Forget her, then…’
‘As you forgot to pick her up from the airport?’
‘Is it any wonder?’ He grinned down at her. ‘Since you, I’ve forgotten there was a life before.’
His kiss melted away her doubts and she stayed, for a while.
Suddenly they were a threesome. Felipe took them both out to dinner that night and was charming and sweet, secretly squeezing Gemma’s hand yet dividing his conversation equally between the two women.
Gemma didn’t return to the mews house with them but diplomatically insisted on getting a taxi to her home and studio in Maida Vale.
‘I’ll call you first thing in the morning,’ Felipe told her outside the restaurant, not arguing with her but kissing her tenderly. Somehow that kiss had seemed so final.
But the next morning, true to his word, he phoned and sent flowers. Later he came round to the studio, saying how much he had missed her, and she locked all thoughts of Bianca away in the depths of her mind.
She showed him the latest project she was working on, a portrait of an industrialist for some élite boardroom.
‘He looks boring and pompous,’ Felipe told her, without meaning to offend.
‘He is,’ Gemma told him abruptly, and he swept her into his arms to kiss away her petulance.
‘You’re offended?’ he laughed.
‘Not at all. I paint what I see.’
‘Paint me.’
‘Never!’ She grinned. ‘I don’t do animal portraits!’ He growled at her neck then and they laughed and everything was suddenly all right. Later she cooked supper and he stayed all night, loving her till the small hours as if Bianca had never been part of the last two days. Gemma didn’t mention her; it would have been an intrusion on something so very special between them. There was only herself and Felipe and their love in the whole wide world…
She’d never seen him again after that. He’d left her at lunchtime, promising to call her later, but he hadn’t. The next day she had driven to the mews house in St John’s Wood, Felipe’s London home when he was in the country. She’d sat in the car and stared up at the house, just knowing it was empty. He’d gone and so had Bianca.
A week later had come the call from New York, but by then it was too late. Gemma had suffered enough.
Gemma glanced at her watch now and frowned. Her escort was late and she was restless and bored but there was little choice but to sit tight and wait. It was too hot to wander the streets of Caracas, and if she did venture out into the soporific heat she might miss Mike Anders, her father’s pilot, who was to fly has the last leg of her journey.
Gemma shivered. She mustn’t think of him as her father; he was a client, a Venezuelan oil man, nothing more, nothing less.
The phone purred and Gemma lifted it. ‘Thank you, I’ll be right down.’
She swung her leather satchel with her brushes and oils over her shoulder and wheeled her suitcase to the lifts. She’d faxed through her other requirements to the Villa Verde: an easel and several canvases. She didn’t know yet what sort of conditions she was expected to work under. A proper studio with the correct light was ideal but on these sort of assignments, in the client’s own home, she would have to make do.
‘Sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss Soames…’ ‘Call me Gemma.’ She smiled at the young American pilot, who was cool, blond and sporty.
‘Gemma it is,’ he grinned back. ‘Pretty heavy schedule today, I’m afraid—that’s why I’m late. Flew de Navas out to Maracaibo last night and just got back this morning. One helluva problem out theremassive oil leak as they were loading one of the tankers. No doubt the ole man will sort it all out.’
‘He’s still there?’ Gemma frowned. She wanted to start as soon as possible, as she had other commissions waiting back in the UK.
‘Yeah, he won’t leave till it’s under control. Hey, don’t worry, be happy, plenty to keep you buzzing out at the ranch,’ he laughed, ushering her into a taxi to the airport. ‘Pool, horses, tennis, shooting; you name it,