‘I thought I made myself abundantly clear, but if you insist.’ His upper torso loomed half over her, an imprisoning hand tightened around her waist, lifting, reinforcing the physical contact she was trying to avoid, while his other hand tangled in her hair, tipping her head up to his.
‘I know you, sweetheart,’ Marcus drawled sardonically. ‘Let you out of my sight and you will sweet-talk some wealthy old man into giving you the money you need to pay off your debt. Ted’s offer was opportune. I own a large chunk of your company and I can prevent that happening.’ Her heart was pounding, her eyes wide open and trained on his darkly handsome face which was taut with anger and something else she could not fail to recognise. ‘And no woman makes a fool of me twice,’ he concluded curtly.
Winded by the ruthless speed with which he had subdued her, breathless and forced into an intimate awareness of his hard muscled body, all the fight went out of her. But she did try to deny his last assumption. ‘No. I didn’t…’ But he didn’t give her the chance.
‘No more lies,’ Marcus rasped, and he kissed her again.
He wasn’t going to listen to her and, even if he did, he would never believe her, not with the proof overwhelmingly against her. His tongue hungrily probed the moist intimacy of her mouth. She wanted to resist, she really did… But a hoarse moan of capitulation was forced from her throat, and her taut body melted against him. She reached for his shoulders and kissed him back with helpless abandon.
The why and wherefore no longer mattered. Time had no meaning; all that existed was the miraculous world of delicious sensations, which only Marcus could provide. His hand at her back urged her up and the strapless bodice of her dress was somehow pushed down. His dark head lowered, burying his head in the soft swell of her breasts until his mouth found a taut nipple to suckle with fierce pleasure.
Three long months, and suddenly physical feelings that she had tried so desperately to suppress exploded in a feverish response. The blood flowed thick and hot through her veins. Her fingers spread up and out to bury in the silken depths of his black hair and hold him to her, never wanting the excitement to end.
Marcus lifted his head and looked down at her pale skin hectically flushed with the heat of arousal. ‘You’re mine,’ Marcus grated roughly. ‘For as long as I want you.’ His glittering dark eyes clashed with her dazed green, and he smiled a predatory twist of his sensuous lips and, rearing back, shrugged off his shirt his hands going to the waistband of his trousers.
Cool air washed over her aching breasts and a tiny voice of sanity echoed in her head. Her mouth ran suddenly dry, and she tensed in rejection at what she was inviting.
‘No,’ Eloise groaned. Whether she was decrying his abandonment of their lovemaking or denying him, she didn’t actually know herself.
Marcus swore viciously under his breath. His dark eyes, leaping with anger, flashed to hers. ‘No. You say no?’ His hands stilled at his waist.
‘Yes.’ Suddenly she was afraid of the half-naked man looming over her.
He almost threw her away from him, her head bouncing on the arm of the sofa as he stood up, and stared down at her with icy eyes.
‘You’re a very sensual woman. Your whole body trembles when I touch you, your eyes flash emerald sparks, you want me—but obviously your stock in trade is to tease. Well, forget it with me… I’ve never forced a woman in my life, and I’m not about to start with you. I can’t abide a tease.’
MARCUS could not have hurt her more if he had tried for a lifetime!
A flashback of another time—another man, equally as hard—calling her the same, and the eyes of every one in the courtroom fixed on her. She blinked rapidly and snapped out of her sensual daze. Sick with horror, Eloise stared at Marcus. He thought she was a tease, along with a thief and a whore, so why did her traitorous body react so excitedly with this one man, when he obviously despised her?
Suddenly she was plunged into complete turmoil between her thoughts and emotions. She was deeply ashamed of the fact that she could not withstand Marcus’s particular brand of blatant sexuality, even though she knew he had no respect, no love for her at all.
Ashen-faced, she struggled into a sitting position, and pulled her dress up over her tight, aching breasts. Head bent, her hair cascaded either side of her face, hopefully masking the humiliation and desperation she felt from his too astute eyes. She clasped her hands in her lap, her fingers entwining nervously. Her heart raced and she fought for breath—panic or passion, she didn’t know.
Marcus saw the pallor of her face before she hid it from him. He noted the defeated droop of her shoulders covered by the mass of her glorious red hair. She looked like some fragile, broken tiger lily sitting there.
Where the hell had that maudlin thought come from? He frowned and shoved his hands into the pocket of his trousers, willing his aroused flesh to subside. She was a man-eating tiger all right. The fragile flower act was a ploy to catch her prey, and he would do well to remember that. His frown deepened. ‘What’s it to be, Eloise?’ A private arrangement or the courts?’
He might as well have said a private affair, because that was what he was demanding from her. She lifted her head. He was standing a foot away, his black hair ruffled where she had run her fingers through it, naked from the waist up. His bronzed torso glistened in the dim light, the muscles clearly defined. She thought of how he had kissed, of how it had felt to have his mouth at her breast, and wished he would put his shirt back on.
‘Not the court,’ she said a little unsteadily, lowering her eyes. Marcus couldn’t possibly know and she couldn’t tell him, but it had coloured her life for years.
It had been a sunny June evening, and a game of tennis on the public courts in the park with a student friend. Eloise at twenty had thought nothing of walking back across the park to the flat she shared with Katy. Until she was grabbed from behind, a horrible dirty hand squeezing her breast, and she was dragged into some bushes. Her attacker had had a knife, but she had screamed anyway and struggled like mad, lashing out with her tennis racket. Her top was ripped from her body, and the short tennis skirt was no barrier to the man’s marauding hand. The knife was at her throat and she was giving up hope of escape when a dog pounced on her attacker. He lashed out with the knife and slashed her leg before running off. The man was caught, but as horrific as the attack had been the court case that followed was worse.
Eloise would never forget facing her attacker in court, nor could she forget the defence lawyer. He raped her with words. Her perfectly conventional tennis outfit became clothing designed to tease, a deliberate provocation. It was her fault she had long legs, long hair; she shared a flat with a man, the fact it was Katy’s boyfriend ignored. The lawyer made her feel dirty and ashamed. The case took two days, and by the end of it when a guilty verdict was returned Eloise was too emotionally shattered to care. And she vowed she would never set foot in a court again.
Lifting her head, she stared at Marcus with cold green eyes. ‘Definitely not the court.’
A cynical smile twisted Marcus’s hard mouth. ‘No court.’ Why did that not surprise him? It simply confirmed she was guilty and she knew it. Still, what did he care for her morals or lack of them? He wanted her sinfully sexy body in his bed, until he sated himself, and she obviously knew the score, so there would be no messy break-up when he tired of her. His conscience clear, reaching out, he grasped her upper arms and hauled her to her feet.
‘Instead, you agree to be my mistress for one year, exclusively mine,’ he emphasised, his dark deep-set eyes burning into Eloise’s. ‘I don’t share, understand?’
She understood, all right. One year in his bed: it was blackmail,