‘There is something wrong. Can I help?’
Could Rafiq de Couteveille read minds? ‘I’m fine,’ she said briskly. After all, she didn’t know this man either.
‘Do you know Gastano well?’
‘I’ve known him for a couple of months,’ she said with restraint.
‘It appears you are close to becoming engaged to him.’
‘What?’ He was watching her keenly, those dark eyes uncomfortably piercing. ‘I don’t know where you got that idea from,’ she said more forcefully than she’d intended, startled by her instinctive rejection of the possibility.
His straight brows rose, but his voice was smooth when he said, ‘You don’t find the idea of taming a man like that intriguing?’
Turning her gaze to the pool and the gracefully curved trunks of the palms beyond, she said abruptly, ‘I don’t find the idea of taming any man intriguing.’
And she stopped, because this was an odd conversation to have with a man she didn’t know.
‘It’s supposed to be a universal female desire,’ he observed.
A note in his words told her he was amused—and strangely, she found that a relief. ‘Not mine,’ she told him brightly. ‘What made you think that we were about to become engaged?’
‘I heard it somewhere,’ he said. ‘Perhaps whoever was discussing it misunderstood—or possibly I did. So what is your desire?’
The flicker of excitement deep inside her leapt into a flame. He was flirting with her.
She should go back inside. Actually, she should leave this party. But that suite upstairs, with its one huge bed, loomed like a threat. Shrugging off that worry, she smiled up at her companion. Although his lips curved in response, she couldn’t see any humour there. He was watching her, his chiselled face enigmatic in the starlight, his expression speculative.
Did he know what was happening to her? Could he feel it too—that keen awareness, the anticipation, hidden yet potent, the whispered instructions she didn’t dare obey?
Hastily, before she could react to a treacherous impulse to lift herself onto her toes and kiss his excitingly sensuous mouth, she said demurely, ‘Only a foolish woman tells a man her innermost desire.’
‘My innermost desire at this moment,’ he said, his deep voice investing the conventional words with an edge that sent Lexie’s pulse racing into overdrive, ‘is to discover if your mouth tastes as good as it looks.’
Lexie froze, her widening eyes taking in his honed features.
His smile twisted into something close to cynicism. ‘But not if it goes against your principles.’
‘No—well—no,’ she stammered, barely able to articulate.
‘Then shall we try it?’ He took her startled silence for assent, and bent his head to claim her lips in a kiss that was surprisingly gentle.
At first.
But when her bones melted his arms came around her and he pulled her against his lean, powerful body—and all hell broke loose.
That cool, exploring kiss hardened into fierce demand and Lexie burned up in his arms, meeting and matching his frankly sexual hunger. Stunned by an urgent, voluptuous craving, she almost surrendered to the adrenalin raging like a bushfire through her.
She felt the subtle flexion of his body, and knew that he too wanted this—this headstrong need, mindless and sensuous. Desperately, she fought to retain a tiny spark of sanity as a bulwark against the white-hot sensations his experienced kiss summoned inside her.
Yet when he lifted his head and drawled, ‘Shall we go further down into the garden?’ it took every ounce of her will power to refuse.
In a ragged voice she muttered, ‘No.’
He let her go and stepped back. Embarrassed, shocked and angry with herself, she whirled and set off for the bright rectangles of light that indicated the doors onto the terrace.
‘One moment.’
Startled into stillness by the decisive command, she stopped and half turned.
He was right behind her. A long-fingered hand lifted to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, and somehow he managed to turn the simple gesture into a caress that sent more forbidden excitement drumming through her.
‘You don’t look quite so storm tossed now,’ he said, that sardonic smile tilting his lips again as he surveyed her face. ‘But a trip to the powder room is advisable, I think.’
‘I—yes,’ she said, forcing her voice into its usual practical tone. ‘Are you coming inside too?’
‘Not for a few minutes,’ he said gravely. ‘My body, alas, is not so easily mastered as yours.’
‘Oh.’ Hot faced, she took off to the sound of his quiet laughter behind her.
Rafiq watched her go, frowning as his aide-de-camp passed her in the doorway, the man’s presence breaking in on thoughts that weren’t as ordered as he’d have liked.
Dragging his mind away from Lexie’s sleek back and the gentle sway of her hips, he said abruptly, ‘Yes?’
‘Your instructions have been followed.’
‘Thank you,’ Rafiq said crisply, and turned to go inside. Then he stopped. ‘You noticed the woman who passed you on the way in?’
‘Yes, sir.’ When Rafiq’s brows lifted, the younger man expanded, ‘She is also under s—’ He stopped as Rafiq’s brows met over his arrogant nose. Hastily he went on, ‘She is staying at the hotel with Count Felipe Gastano.’
He stepped back as another man approached them, saying to Rafiq, ‘You’re leaving already, sir?’
Rafiq returned the newcomer’s smile. He respected any man who’d hauled himself up from poverty and refugee status, and this man—the CEO of the construction firm that had built the new resort—was noted for his honesty and philanthropy. ‘I’m afraid I must,’ he said. ‘I have an early call tomorrow.’
They exchanged pleasantries, but as Rafiq turned to go the older man said, ‘And you will consider the matter we discussed previously?’
‘I will,’ Rafiq told him with remote courtesy. ‘But I am unable to make the decision; there must be consultations with the council first.’
The older man said shrewdly, ‘I wonder if you will ever regret giving up the power your forebears took for granted?’
Rafiq’s broad shoulders lifted in a negligent shrug. ‘In the eyes of the world Moraze might be only a smallish island in the Indian Ocean. But its few-million citizens are as entitled to the privileges and responsibilities of democracy as any other free people, and if they don’t want them now they will soon enough. I am a practical man. If I hadn’t introduced self-government, power would eventually have been taken away—either from me or from one of my descendants.’
‘I wish all rulers were as enlightened,’ the other man said. He paused before adding, ‘I know my daughter has already thanked you for your magnificent birthday gift, but I must thank you also. I know how rare fire-diamonds are, and that one is superb.’
‘It is nothing.’ Rafiq dismissed his gift with a smile. ‘Freda and I are old friends—and the diamond suits her.’
They shook hands and Rafiq frowned, his mind not on the woman who’d been his lover until six months previously but on Alexa Sinclair Considine, with the gold-burnished hair and the steady gaze, and a mouth that summoned erotic fantasies.
And her relationship with a man he loathed and despised.
She was no