‘Now what is it you want?’
With a little shrug, feeling indebted, uncertainly she told him. He dealt with it swiftly and effortlessly. And not only that—in fluent French!
‘And the recipient?’ he enquired, reverting to English to ask her.
Cynthia Hardwicke, she almost said, realising only just in time that that would blow her cover good and proper. ‘Address it to “Mum,” care of …’ Casually she filled him in with the name of the friend her mother was staying with. ‘And the message is simply, Happy Birthday. Love from Rayne.’
It took him just seconds, it seemed, to supply the florist with his own details, his voice deep and confident, its dark rich timbre sending an unwanted tingle along Rayne’s spine.
‘Thanks,’ she murmured when he had finished, unable to look at him as she came around the desk. ‘I really wasn’t asking you to do that. I can let you have the cash.’
‘There’s no hurry,’ he said, his tone surprisingly reassuring, the sudden touch of his hand on her shoulder bringing her startled gaze to his.
She looked instantly wary, King thought, noticing the guarded emotion in the green-gold depths of her eyes. They were, quite simply, the most beautiful eyes he had seen on any woman he’d ever met, but there was some other emotion behind the wariness that was defying him to touch her. Sadness, he was startled to recognise. Deep-buried, but not altogether concealed. And he knew in that moment that somehow—somewhere—those eyes had penetrated his consciousness before. Last week? Last year? He gave a mental shrug. Perhaps it was only in his dreams.
‘We got off to a bad start.’ He was surprised at how hoarse his voice sounded. Was it because his hormones had kicked in again, causing him to harden from the warmth of her body through her thin blouse? Or was it the dark and heady mixture of her perfume? ‘I thought it might be sensible if we were both to try again.’ Otherwise she’d get away from him, he was sure, and he’d never lost a woman he’d set his heart on having in his life.
‘Try?’ she ventured croakily, realising why she had never stood a chance against his potent masculinity as a teenager. He was really quite amazing. With those dynamically dark looks. In the way he spoke. The way he carried himself. As if he owned the world. Which he probably did. Or a fair proportion of it anyway, she thought cynically, resenting him for how rich he was, how influential, and for making her wish that she was spreadeagled over that desk with him …
‘To be civil to each other,’ she heard him saying. ‘I’ll accept that your reason for being here is all above board. And you …’ He was massaging his lower jaw with his free hand. ‘You’ll promise to keep your hands to yourself.’
Wings of colour touched her cheeks from his all too shaming reminder of how she had struck him. ‘As long as you promise to do the same with yours.’
‘If that’s what you want.’
Rayne felt her throat constrict. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
He smiled silkily. ‘You know very well.’
Yes, she did. The last thing she wanted was for him to spell it out, but it seemed he was going to anyway as he went on.
‘Calling a truce, unfortunately, isn’t going to put paid to the fact that there’s a definite chemistry between us, Rayne, even if you do want to deny it. But a woman doesn’t respond to a man the way you responded to me unless she wants that man to make love to her. Even if she is, as I’d very much like to rule out, a woman with some other agenda.’
‘I got carried away—that was all,’ she said quickly, hating to admit it but desperate to quash any adverse notion in his mind about her reasons for being there. ‘So. I find you attractive.’ Who wouldn’t? ‘But we don’t always give in to what our baser instincts are telling us to do, do we? I’m sorry I reacted in the way I did.’ She was referring to striking him. ‘I was just a bit wound up, that’s all. Unprepared …’
‘For what happened between us?’
She nodded.
‘And are you still unprepared?’
No, she wasn’t, she realised, because even this conversation with him was turning her on, making her body zing with a host of traitorous impulses.
‘I can deal with it,’ she said huskily, wishing she could tear herself away from him, but she couldn’t seem to do it.
‘Can you?’ When she didn’t respond, too sensually aware to answer, coolly he suggested, ‘Let’s see.’
As he was speaking he’d positioned himself on the edge of the desk. Now, as his arm snaked around her tiny waist, Rayne lost her balance and shot out a hand to steady herself, gasping as she made unwitting contact with the hard, bunching muscles of his thigh.
The intimacy sent shock waves coursing through her body. She could tell from King’s sharply drawn breath that it was having a devastating effect on him too.
‘Heaven help me if you weren’t sent here just to drive me out of my mind!’ he rasped before his mouth came down to plunder the warm, willing cavern of hers.
This time she didn’t stop to think because the scent and sound and feel of him were driving her insane for him and suddenly she was utterly lost to the eager and hungry demands of her own body.
When he tugged her blouse open and pulled a lacy cup down over her full, high breast, she arched her back, angling her body in sweet invitation to him to take the hard throbbing tip into his mouth.
Proud of her femininity, she writhed between his thighs, thrilling in his strength as he used them to clamp her to him, while he continued to drive her crazy by suckling harder at her breast.
Unlocking her womb, she thought crazily, as sensations spiralled downwards to the most secret heart of her, making her hot and moist in readiness for the hard penetration of his body.
‘Deny it all you like, you’re going to be my woman, Rayne. You are my woman. Understand?’ he breathed raggedly against the sensitised hollow of her ear. ‘Otherwise why would you let me do this?’ His fingers found her other breast, making her gasp and strain against him as he tormented the sensitive bud. ‘Or this?’ His other hand slid down her body to clasp her buttock, caressing and moulding, its heat searing through her thin trousers before it moved possessively round to cup her aching femininity. ‘Why?’ he demanded huskily. ‘If you can’t accept that, too?’
She wanted to protest. She knew she should. But how could she? she demanded chaotically of herself. When she knew she had been made for this! That she was his and always had been, and that even if her mind recognised the treachery of acknowledging it, her body wouldn’t listen.
But she had to make it listen …
He’s your enemy. So what does that make you?
Dredging up every ounce of self-discipline that she could muster, she wrenched herself away from him.
‘I don’t want this!’ she choked, dragging the back of her hand across her mouth.
‘Really?’ Still perched on the edge of the desk, he was breathing as heavily as she was. ‘Then you’re putting up a darn good show of convincing me otherwise.’
‘I don’t care what you think.’ Which was a joke, she thought distractedly, even as she said it. Because, for some strange reason she still did. ‘I don’t want to get involved with you.’
‘Why not? When it’s so patently obvious that we could be good together?’ He looked hot and flushed and still so obviously aroused. ‘Are you in a relationship with someone else?’
‘That’s none of your business,’ she snapped, straightening her clothes with faltering fingers.
‘So