‘Oh, yes, of course…’ she muttered, slightly reassured.
‘Although I must admit it was touch and go there for a moment,’ he added slyly, and Nora gave a little yelp as she mistimed her step off the moving pad, hooking her heel on the metal rim and lurching drunkenly against him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ultra-conscious of the coiled tension in his flexing muscles. ‘I—I guess I’m still feeling a bit weak at the knees—’
He didn’t even break stride, his hand sliding from her elbow to her wrist, supporting the full weight of her stumble with his braced forearm. ‘I’m flattered.’
His confident amusement ruffled her pride. ‘I was talking about the lift!’
‘So was I,’ he drawled, negotiating what seemed like a maze of pillars and walkways at a pace which had Nora’s loose coat billowing out behind her and rendered her even more breathless and light-headed. Blake MacLeod was clearly a very goal-orientated man, as decisive in his actions as he was in his ideas. Swept up in his whirlwind energy, Nora wondered darkly whether any woman had ever succeeded in making him weak at the knees.
He slowed down slightly, only because they had reached the plush hotel foyer and were approaching a bank of lifts. The door to one of the lifts instantly hummed open, as if to his silent decree.
‘Open sesame!’ Nora murmured, contemplating the empty, elegantly lit interior with a frisson of alarm.
‘How fortunate for both of us that you know the secret password.’ Blake distracted her with his sensuous purr, using his body to shepherd her gently over the threshold.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that cracking passwords was one of her professional specialities, but that would be far too prosaic. ‘I thought everyone did,’ she said huskily.
‘Only those conversant with The Arabian Nights. And knowing what words to say is useless unless you know where and when to say them. You enjoy romantic tales of the imagination?’ he asked, moving over to the control panel.
‘It beats reality any day,’ she said with a wry twist of her mouth.
‘Maybe your previous reality just hasn’t been exciting enough to compete with your imaginative desires.’ His deep lazy tone was an implicit promise to remedy the fact.
Her ‘previous reality’ had complained about her lack of imagination, but her disturbingly intense response to Blake’s caressing words and flagrant handling put an entirely different slant on Ryan’s taunts about Nora’s sexual shortcomings. Now she wondered if it hadn’t been her awareness of his impatience and an over-anxious desire to please which had inhibited her lovemaking. She wouldn’t have to worry about pleasing Blake MacLeod in bed. She had complete confidence that he would please himself no matter what she did or didn’t do!
She moistened her dry lips and his eyes narrowed on her tense face. ‘If this is really a problem for you, we could take the stairs,’ he said, flattening his hand across both door controls to prevent the lift from moving.
She was stunned by his thoughtfulness. ‘N-no, I’m fine. I’m OK as long as I can’t see where we are on the vertical scale…’ An awful thought struck her. ‘You aren’t in the penthouse suite, are you?’
His head moved fractionally in the negative, his grey eyes absorbing her relief as she sighed. ‘You must think I’m a terrible coward…’
‘Must I?’ His raised eyebrows expressed surprise that anybody should tell him what to think.
She lifted her chin. ‘I know it seems irrational—’
‘Feelings frequently are illogical—it doesn’t make them any less valid.’ He shrugged. ‘Our primitive instincts and basic drives often cause havoc with our rational selves…we call it being human.’
She was wary of his understanding. ‘I hope you don’t think I’m weak and over-emotional just because I’m a woman.’
‘God forbid,’ he said drily, finally setting the lift in motion with a casual tap of a knuckle. ‘Some of the strongest and most ruthlessly unsentimental people I know are women.’ He leaned back against the wall of the lift and folded his arms across his chest, regarding her flushed face with a smoky satisfaction. ‘And as a man I’m quite happy to admit that there are times when allowing one’s primitive urges free rein is deeply rewarding…’
When he suddenly chuckled it was a stinging reminder of another man’s belittlement.
Her eyes blazed at him. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘I was just thinking…you’d make a good model for Boadicea right now—tall and queenly, feminine and fierce, draped in a flowing raiment and carrying your bag and umbrella clasped to your bosom like a sword and shield.’
To Nora’s chagrin she realised that she was indeed clutching her accessories in front of her like defensive weapons. She forced herself to nonchalantly lower her arms.
‘If I’m Boadicea who are you…one of my lowly English serfs?’
His eyes gleamed with appreciation. ‘I rather saw myself as a Roman general accepting your surrender.’
Nora tossed her autumn-brown head in unconscious challenge. No man was ever again going to bemoan her passiveness. ‘I don’t think Boadicea ever surrendered herself to the Romans, did she?’
‘Actually, I think she chose to take poison rather than bow her head in defeat,’ he said, pushing himself off the wall as the lift pinged its arrival at the selected floor. ‘You look as if you admire her courage. Is my captive warrior queen getting cold feet?’ he murmured against the rumble of the opening door. The words were playful, but the underlying message was not.
Colour streaked across Nora’s cheeks. ‘I’m nobody’s captive!’
‘Very impressive, but that doesn’t answer my question.’
She looked him straight in the eye, concealing her angry turmoil, determined to be bold and assertive.
‘You’re the one who seems to be having second thoughts, General. Afraid you can’t handle me without a legion at your back?’
Silver light flared in his storm-dark eyes and hot blood pulsed through the vein in his exposed temple.
‘I already have,’ he reminded her with a lethal smile steeped in male arrogance. He braced his hand across the gap into which the sliding door had retracted. ‘And, as I recall, you would have been on your knees if I hadn’t been holding you up.’
‘I thought that was where you wanted me to be,’ she shot back.
‘Oh, it is…but I’d prefer to wait until we’re both naked.’ He was swift to take advantage of her unwitting double-entendre. ‘It’s much more satisfying that way.’
She blushed from head to foot but valiantly battled on. ‘Maybe you’ll be the one brought to your knees.’
His eyelids lowered over his sultry amusement. ‘I’d like that. I’m all for equal opportunity in the bedroom.’
Her mouth went dry as she thought of this aggressive and strong-willed male submitting himself to her every whim, his sleek, muscled body her erotic playground, his sexual expertise hers to command. ‘And out of it?’
‘I like to think of myself as a fair man. Is it relevant?’
Of course it wasn’t. She was just wasting time. She swallowed hard, trying to work some moisture into her mouth so her voice wouldn’t come out as a nervous croak. ‘Which way is your suite?’
‘To the right—the right,’ he repeated, hooking her by the elbow as she veered in the wrong direction.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered, flustered by her