Reckless Conduct, page 13
‘I don’t think you know what your type is, Harriet; that’s the problem…’
‘You may see it as a problem—I see it as a challenge,’ she said with a reckless toss of her head. ‘After all, looking is half the fun of the game—’
‘But you’re not really looking for fun, you’re looking for forgetfulness,’ he said with a quiet certainty that struck her to the heart. ‘And I’m afraid you won’t find it in meaningless sexual encounters. If anything you’ll discover an even more corrosive form of loneliness—’
‘I thought you said you wanted to look around the apartment,’ she interrupted fiercely, not wanting to hear any more. ‘I’m going to get the drinks.’
She half expected him to trail her into the kitchen to continue cutting at her fragile composure, but to her unutterable relief she heard the quiet rustle of his footsteps as he prowled briefly around the lounge and then deeper into the back of the apartment.
By the time she carried the tray of drinks and dishes of olives and cheese out into the living room she felt ready to face him again, but to her surprise Marcus still hadn’t reappeared from his self-guided tour.
What was he doing? she wondered as she anxiously sipped her drink. What had he found to interest him for so long? When she could bear the tension no longer she walked cautiously towards the bedroom, ready to beat a hasty retreat if she heard him in the bathroom.
She found him sitting on the edge of her bed, engrossed in a book from the stack on top of her bedside cabinet—the result of her whirlwind unpacking.
He looked up as she hovered warily in the doorway.
‘How To Turn Your Life Around?’ His mouth curved wryly. ‘I thought you had already worked that out to your satisfaction.’ He turned his attention to the rest of the books, which still bore their price stickers, and began to sort through them. ‘Mmm, your bedtime reading is very instructive—How To Be The Woman You Are, Blondes Have More Fun—two contradictory titles there! And what’s this? How To Attract Men. I would have thought that was rather superfluous for you too, since you became a sizzling platinum blonde…’
Sizzling? Intent on preventing him from reaching the bottom of the pile, Harriet hastened forward, but she was too late. His eyebrows shot up as he studied the final cover.
‘Sexual Fulfilment: Erotic Techniques To Enhance Female Pleasure.’
‘Give me that!’ Flustered, she tried to snatch it out of his hand.
‘Give you what? Sexual fulfilment?’ he enquired with a wicked grin, easily evading her attack by catching her wrist and pulling her down onto the bed beside him. ‘Why, Harriet, I’m flattered by your eagerness but it’s rude to grab.’
‘I meant give me the book!’ she grated at him, feeling the heat of his thigh against her hip as they bounced lightly together on the edge of the bed.
‘Why? Do you think I’d be shocked?’
To her dismay he flicked the book on his lap open at random, and they both looked down at the explicit colour drawing which accompanied the test.
‘Goodness!’ he murmured, with fine restraint. The woman was blonde, the man dark-haired and lithely muscular. Harriet wondered hectically if he had blue eyes. She tore her gaze from the erotic blending of male and female on the page and looked helplessly at Marcus. His eyelids had drooped and a slightly dreamy look of fascination softened his hard face. A faint tinge of redness stole into his cheeks as the seconds ticked by, and a pulse began to throb heavily at his temple.
He slowly turned the page. The whisper of paper sounded loud in the quiet room. He turned another and she saw his nostrils flare as he inhaled sharply.
‘Goodness,’ he murmured again, and lifted his head. Their eyes clashed and his were darkly brilliant, but not, she knew, with shock.
‘You aren’t looking,’ he accused thickly.
‘Yes, I am.’ The dazed words were out before she could stop them. ‘I mean—’
His eyes flared with triumph.
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ he growled, spilling the book off his lap onto the floor as he half turned to reach for her, dragging her against his chest.
‘You’re looking with your mind,’ he said huskily against her mouth, ‘and your mind can see you and me doing to each other what that man and woman are doing…only we’re not frozen into position on the pages of a book. We can move. We’re real, warm and alive and so is this…’
He kissed her deep and hard, burying his mouth in hers, using his teeth to tease her lips apart and his tongue to thrust roughly inside. His hand slid from her upper arms to her ribcage, his fingers splaying up her slender sides, gripping her, supporting her torso while he slowly twisted from side to side, massaging her breasts with the rigid muscles of his chest. With a groan he turned her even further into the heated embrace, forcing her head back with the power of his kiss, lifting his knee to rest his thigh heavily across her sprawled legs, urging her against the hardness between his legs.
‘Kiss me; touch me the way she was touching him.’ He whispered the ragged command into the moist depths of her being, and she felt him tear at his buttons so that his shirt parted across his smooth, hot chest. Then his fingers were sliding against her T-shirt, pulling it free from the top of her jeans, the pads of his fingertips rasping like rough satin against her bare skin.
‘Marcus—’
He bit her throat, his fingers curving into her soft waist as he sucked at her flesh. ‘Yes, say my name; tell me where you want me to stroke you; tell me what excites you…’
Everything excited her. She could barely string two coherent thoughts together, let alone utter any words. All that came from her lungs were gasps and tiny whimpers and moans that seemed to drive him into a greater frenzy.
Harriet clutched at the thick-hewn shoulders under the loose white shirt, her manicured nails biting into the rippling muscle and raking down his biceps, causing him to arch and shudder and rub himself more frantically against her. The heat was coming off him in waves, the muscles in his arms and chest jerking with convulsive tension, his hot mouth ravishing her senses as he hungrily devoured her response to his astonishing explosion of desire.
Almost as exciting as his touch was the knowledge that he was no longer in control of himself. The polite, courteous protector had disappeared, leaving a man in the grip of a primitive, driving passion. He was shaking with it…sweating with it, his skin growing slippery beneath Harriet’s hands.
She licked the salt from his collar-bone and he uttered a harsh cry and toppled like a mighty oak, taking her down sideways onto the bed as his hands found her rounded breasts beneath the T-shirt.
‘I knew you weren’t wearing a bra,’ he muttered harshly, covering the delicate mounds with his palms, cupping and shaping her with his fingers, finding the soft nipples with his thumbs and tracing their outline by feel, circling them over and over again, drawing them out with the gentle pressure of his nails. ‘I could see these shadowed against the cotton…dark, smooth, round discs that I wanted to touch and lick and suck until they were ripe and wet and hard…as hard as I was…’
He nuzzled her mouth as he told her what else he had wanted to do to her breasts with his tongue and hands and body while she had been standing there talking, innocently unaware of his lustful fancies, and his eloquent description made Harriet so dizzy that if she hadn’t been lying down she would have swooned like a Victorian maiden.
She couldn’t believe that it was cool, contained Marcus Fox saying these things to her—raw, explicit, sexual things that should have made her melt with embarrassment but which sent hot bolts of pleasure shafting through her breasts and belly until her whole body throbbed with feverish anticipation.
She was almost sobbing with frustration by the time he pushed the T-shirt up over her breasts, thrusting her onto her back with the weight of his body, one thigh wedging heavily between hers as he braced himself on his elbow half over her.
‘Yes…oh, God, yes,’ he said hoarsely as he framed one breast in his fingers, preparing to shape her for his mouth. ‘Such lovely, big nipples for such small, delicate breasts…they quite enchant me…’ His fingers contracted firmly and he bent to dampen the jutting tip with his tongue. ‘Ah, yes, and they’re so very, very sensitive, aren’t they, darling? Exquisitely, beautifully sensitive. I know they are, and I promise I’ll be very, very careful not to let you come before you’re ready this time…’
Time was meaningless to Harriet. She heard his words through a thin veil of red mist, giving a ragged cry and arching her spine as she felt his mouth moistly envelop her in unspeakable pleasure. He moved from one breast to the other and it was just like her dream…better than her imagination…Marcus over her, his rumpled shirt hanging open, his chest rippling with each savage undulation of his hips as he moved on her, pushing down between her thighs with slow, grinding thrusts, building a familiar violent tension that made her thresh and moan. It had never been like this before, never. Keith had never roused her to such heights, and so how could it be familiar? And yet…and yet…
She cried out Marcus’s name, her intense yearning mingled with bewilderment.
He stiffened, and responded by seeming to drag himself back from the brink of that unnamed violence.
‘I know, I know…you wonder what’s happening to us,’ he soothed raggedly, returning to nip and suck at her swollen mouth, fondling her with his darting tongue. ‘It feels so incredibly right, doesn’t it, to be with me like this…as if we know exactly how to please each other without having to be told, without needing a book of instructions…?’
His hand moved down to plunge between her thighs, his finger testing the inner seam of her jeans, rubbing the ridge of denim lightly against her most sensitive woman’s flesh. She gasped, and he dipped and drank the sound from her lips.
His finger moved again, scraping back and forth, and his mouth hovered invitingly. ‘Yes…it’s strong, isn’t it? If you want to live by your instincts, Harriet, ask yourself what your instincts are telling you now…Why don’t you show me just how daring my reckless blonde can be?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘NO!’
Harriet took them both by surprise by shoving at him with a burst of superhuman strength. He reared back and she half scrambled, half fell off the side of bed, landing with a jolting thud on her bottom. She lay there, panting, staring up at him in a state of deep shock.
A ‘reckless blonde’. Knowing what she was should have made his blood run cold, not hot. His cynical mistrust was her best protection against her own wayward desires.
Marcus sat staring back. His face was dark with blood, his powerful body bunched and aggressive, his cool eyes a molten blue. His close-cut black hair stood up in little spikes and his glistening chest was heaving. He looked like a wild man.
He bent, extending his hand towards her, and Harriet scooted back on her bottom.
‘No, don’t touch me!’
There was a stinging pause. ‘It’s a little late for that, isn’t it, Harriet?’
He was looking at her bare breasts and she felt a fresh rush of heat as she dragged down the T-shirt that was rucked up under her arms, trying not to notice how it caught and clung to the dampened peaks.
‘It’s never too late to say no,’ she said raggedly.
‘At the risk of being accused of not being a gentleman—that’s not true,’ he said with dangerous softness. ‘There’s a definite point of no return for both men and women…and we weren’t very far from reaching it.’ His hand remained extended. ‘Here, let me help you up.’
She didn’t trust herself to touch him. She got to her knees, and then wavered to her feet. He got off the bed, moving slowly, making no attempt to button his shirt. The smooth olive of his chest was marred in several places by red smudges, and Harriet was horrified to realise that they were the marks left by her teeth when she had bitten him in the throes of her violent excitement. There were claw marks too, across one shoulder and down his arm. She remembered his thick groan when she had done it and wondered sickly if she had hurt him…
Frightened by the pain that the thought caused, she said baldly, ‘I think you should go now…’
She turned and walked unsteadily back to the lounge, where she dragged his jacket out of the closet and held it out to him.
‘Why? Have I offended you?’ he murmured, crooking his arm to catch the jacket as she let it fall. She couldn’t stop looking at his chest and he glanced down and ruefully touched one of the red marks, just below his glossy brown nipple.
‘Were we too rough? I should have warned you that I tend towards a certain primitiveness in my lovemaking, perhaps because the rest of my life is necessarily so highly civilised.’ His fingers drifted lightly across his skin. ‘Somehow you make me feel even more vulnerable, stripped of every ounce of control and inhibition.’
Harriet stiffened, fighting off an attack of dizzying panic. She didn’t want to be responsible for anyone’s feelings, not when she couldn’t even cope with her own…
‘That’s because you don’t really trust me. You can’t; how can you? I’m a blonde!’ She said it in the same awful tones she might have used to announce that she was a bride of Satan.
‘I had noticed,’ he said drily.
‘Of course you had.’ She clutched at the straw. ‘Maybe that’s the problem…maybe it was my hair that triggered you off. We were talking about your disillusionment with synthetic blondes, and you were remembering…and then you were looking at—at those pictures in the book and…and, well, maybe you’re not quite as cured of your—uh—fatal weakness as you thought you were,’ she ended lamely.
It sounded thin even to her own ears and she watched nervously as he quietly began to button up his shirt with his free hand.
He didn’t hurry, and he finished by neatly tucking the tails under his narrow belt before commenting finally, ‘Interesting theory. Of course, that doesn’t explain your behaviour. You melted like wax the moment I touched you…you were mine every step of the way—until you got a bad case of cold feet.’
‘That’s not what happened—’
‘I was there; I know what happened; and I know why,’ he added, picking up his briefcase and strolling over to the door. ‘Face it, Harriet, you’re not and never will be a genuine risk-taker. You don’t have the temperament for living life on the edge. You’ll always think of a logical reason to hold yourself back, to do the sensible thing. You’re so busy running that you haven’t even bothered to look around and see that what you’re so frightened of is only a chimera—’
‘I’m not running from anything,’ she cried angrily, marching after him.
He paused, hand on the doorknob. ‘No? Let’s put that to the test, shall we? I dare you to cancel your date with Sam tomorrow night and have dinner with me.’
‘It’s Nigel,’ she retorted hotly. ‘And if you think you can manipulate me with a childish ploy like that you’re very much mistaken.’
* * *
So how was it that the next night, instead of painting the town red with Nigel, she was dining by candlelight at the Fox residence, eating glazed lamb cutlets and sedately carrying on a conversation with a complacent and relaxed Marcus and his well-mannered daughter?
Harriet wasn’t quite certain herself; she only knew that Marcus was far more skilled than she at winning arguments and an expert at burying his opponent in confusion.
Tonight, for instance, when she had driven up to his imposing residence, primed for battle and dressed accordingly in a severe black dress that covered her from throat to ankle, emphasising the uncompromising whiteness of her hair, she had been taken aback to be welcomed by Nicola, serenely playing hostess for her father.
It had been Nicola who had shown her around the beautiful old house, with its ornate, high ceilings and gracious rooms filled with lovingly cared-for antiques, Nicola who had brought her a pre-dinner drink and generated the small talk that bridged the initial awkward gap between Harriet and her unexpectedly reticent host.
Harriet’s intention to behave badly and make Marcus regret ever having forced the invitation had died without a whimper when she’d found out that Nicola had not only been responsible for the romantic table setting in the sumptuous dining room, but had also helped prepare the meal and took her social duties very seriously.
‘Granny says that every woman should know the key elements of giving a good dinner party,’ she’d said as she’d shown them their places at the table with a mixture of naive pride and maturity. ‘And Daddy said it’s a useful business tool to have the ability to put people at ease in a social setting.’
‘Even for a filing clerk,’ Marcus had teased gently, waiting until the two ladies were seated before sitting down himself.
‘I won’t always be a filing clerk,’ Nicola had pointed out, and the conversation had flowed into a discussion of what else she might be, given the options available to her, and Harriet had been startled to find her own opinions solicited and dwelt on as if she actually had influence on the matter.
Against all odds, Harriet found herself relaxing and forgetting that she was supposed to be here under duress. It was a bitter-sweet experience to find herself dining once more en famille, talking about events both momentous and mundane. Meals after her mother’s death had tended to be scrappy, due to her father’s lack of interest in anything other than his grief, and later he had been too ill to sit at the table.
‘Glad you decided to change your mind after all?’ Marcus leaned towards her at one point to murmur, the stern lines of his face flattered by the candlelight, the smile on his lips echoed in his eyes.
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. ‘Oh, is that what happened?’ Harriet replied with gentle sarcasm, conscious of a faint anxiety in Nicola’s observant gaze, as if she sensed the surging undercurrents.
‘Well, you’re here now, and that’s all that matters…’
Was it? Why?
She couldn’t make him out. He had been charming, urbane and kind. He had said nothing that was designed to make her feel nervous or uncomfortable…and still he seemed to grow ever more threatening in her awareness. He had dressed formally, and so had Nicola, and yet his manner was flatteringly informal…the three of them, laughing and talking around the table, being served by a smiling housekeeper to whom Harriet was introduced on a first-name basis.
