Which was unfortunate, considering her reputation kind of rested on getting this shirt back.
‘You first.’
Placing her right hand firmly on the table, Tamsin hoped he couldn’t see how much it was shaking.
‘You’re left-handed?’
‘In some things.’
She took the shot, mis-hitting wildly so that the balls scattered crazily over the table.
‘You’re sure this is one of those things?’ Behind her his was voice cold and mocking. ‘Maybe you might be better with your right hand.’
She turned, colour seeping into her cheeks as a slow pulse of anger beat in her veins. ‘Thanks for the tip, but can we assume that if I want your help I’ll ask for it?’
‘I thought I’d already made it clear that, even if you did, you wouldn’t get it,’ he said smoothly, moving around the table and potting balls with a swift, lethal efficiency that made Tamsin’s heart plummet. ‘Although maybe I could make it a little fairer.’ He smiled lazily across the table, moving his cue to the other hand. ‘Since you’re playing left-handed, I will too. Number ten. To you.’
Tamsin opened her mouth to make some stinging retort, but found her throat was dry and no words came. Helplessly her gaze fixed itself on the strong, tanned hand Alejandro placed on the table, splaying his lean, long fingers.
The room was very quiet and very still. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece, below which the fire had sunk to an amber glow. His narrow, focused stare was exactly level with her knicker line, and it was intense enough to feel like he could see right through the flimsy grey chiffon.
The thought sent a gush of arousal crashing through her.
The sudden sharp crack of the balls colliding made her jump, and she watched, mesmerized, as the yellow ball rolled gently across the green baize towards the pocket beside her thigh. A shiver rippled through her as she suddenly, unaccountably, found herself thinking not of the movement of the ball across the table, but of Alejandro’s fingers over her skin …
Guiltily she wrenched her head up as the ball came to a halt. Alejandro was watching her, the expression on his dark, bruised face unreadable.
‘There,’ he said with exaggerated courtesy. ‘Your turn.’
Tamsin blinked. He’d missed the shot. That was good news, but somehow the knowledge that he’d only missed because he’d taken it with his left hand took any sense of triumph she might have felt and turned it right on its head.
‘I don’t need favours, Alejandro, and I don’t need special treatment,’ she snapped, walking briskly towards him to take the shot. ‘In fact, let’s be honest, I don’t need any of this. Wouldn’t it be better for both of us if you just did the decent thing for once in your life and gave the shirt back to me now? Or are you on some kind of personal mission to make my life as unpleasant and difficult as possible?’
‘You want to concede defeat?’
There was a sinister, watchful stillness about him, and his tone was carefully neutral, but she heard the challenge in his words.
She smiled slowly, sweetly. Adrenalin was pulsing through her like pure alcohol, dilating her blood vessels, making her heart beat faster. She felt high, but at the same time perfectly lucid and oddly calm as she turned her body towards his, mirroring his position, leaning with one hip propped against the edge of the table. ‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you?’ she said softly. ‘Which is exactly why it’s the last thing I’d ever do.’
He didn’t smile back. His swollen upper lip accentuated the beauty of his face while making him look twice as dangerous. Standing there, with the lamplight making the hair that fell over his face blue-black, he was every inch the Spanish conquistador.
‘You’re sure about that?’ he said quietly, almost apologetically. ‘You have to know that you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning this?’
He held her in his gaze. It was like drowning slowly in warm syrup … delicious … but no less terrifying for it. She blinked. Drowning was drowning, after all.
‘Let’s see, shall we?’ she said in a low voice, and moved round so that she was facing the table again. She was acutely, painfully aware of him beside her, towering over her as she bent to take her shot, looking down on her bare back with that hard, golden gaze that seemed to warm her skin like evening sun.
She had to get a grip. Concentrate.
There was no hurry. She flexed her shoulders slightly, steadying herself. Above her she heard a low rasping sound as Alejandro dragged a hand across his stubble-roughened jaw. She clamped her own mouth shut against the whimper of excitement that rose up in her at the sound, and took the shot.
With a series of satisfying staccato clicks, the balls ricocheted around the table, the orange she’d lined up cannoning neatly into the top pocket. She threw him a quick glance from under her lashes as she moved around to the other side of the table.
‘I hope you’re keeping score.’
Alejandro gave a low, ironic laugh. ‘Don’t worry about that. And you still have a long way to go before the shirt is yours. Don’t get complacent.’
The look she gave him was full of fire and loathing. Alejandro watched with interest as she bent forward over the table to take the next shot, his eyes automatically travelling to the shadowed hollow between her breasts. Being so relentlessly spoiled for a lifetime had obviously given her a completely unrealistic grasp of her own limitations, he mused, forcing himself to shift his gaze upwards to her face. In the glow of the lamp above, the green baize of the table intensified the colour of her eyes to a vivid emerald. He watched them flicker, dart, measuring the distance as a tiny frown of concentration appeared between them.
She hesitated, completely focused, the tip of her pink tongue appearing between her plump lips. She moved, and with one swift flick of her wrist the ball dropped into the pocket. As it fell, Alejandro realised he’d been holding his breath. His whole body felt tense.
Well, that was one word for it. And some parts felt more ‘tense’ than others.
Damn her. As she straightened up he saw the same look of self-satisfied triumph on her face as he’d seen earlier in the hallway with her father when she’d got her own way. She was playing him, he thought acidly. She was perfectly aware of how sexy she looked, leaning over that table with her dress falling forward, and her green eyes right on a level with his crotch. She was manipulating him as ruthlessly as she had that night at Harcourt Manor all those years ago, but with twice as much finesse.
‘This isn’t complacency, Mr D’Arienzo,’ she said huskily. ‘This is confidence.’
Lust gripped him, making him feel dizzy. Leaning against the wall, tipping his head back, he watched through narrowed eyes as she undulated around the table, taking shot after shot. In the quiet room, everything seemed distorted, exaggerated, so that he was almost painfully aware of the soft sigh of her breathing, the whisper of chiffon against her velvet skin.
She straightened up. ‘How many times do I have to tell you I don’t want special treatment?’ she said coldly. ‘I missed. It’s your turn.’
Scowling, he levered himself upright and walked stiffly around the table. His mind had been so occupied with other things he’d almost forgotten about the game, and he was surprised to see how few balls remained now. She was more skilled than he’d thought. As he leaned over the table he was aware of her picking up the small cube of chalk and rubbing it across the tip of her cue. He looked up. She was holding the cue in both hands in front of her, like a pornographic prop, and as he watched she put it by her mouth and blew softly, getting rid of the excess chalk.