The Demetrios Bridal Bargain (11 page)

‘Have you never—' she choked ‘—heard of political correctness?'

‘Heard of it, but I don't have an awful lot of time for it. Don't take it personally, Rose, I'm just being practical.'

‘Practical
,' she spluttered, practically shaking with outrage.

‘I don't think there's anything incorrect in using what assets you've got, and don't tell me you never have.'

This cynical suggestion made her temper fizz. ‘No, I haven't.'

She knew she shouldn't respond to his sceptical shrug because he was obviously trying to needle her, but Rose couldn't bite her tongue.

‘As for encouraging anyone called Demetrios to leer at me,' she said, ‘I don't think so—just being around anyone of that name for any length of time is enough to make me want to go lie down in a quiet, darkened room.' She would have felt a lot happier if the mental image that accompanied that hot statement had her lying alone in the quiet, darkened room.

‘I had no idea you felt that way…' He glanced at his watch and sighed. ‘Unfortunately my father does not like tardiness. Otherwise I would be perfectly willing to oblige.'

The colour flew to her face; he had an uncanny ability to read her mind. ‘I meant
alone
in a darkened room with a cold compress on my head, not you…' On top of me…inside me…What would that feel like, she wondered, to feel the weight of his hard body on top of her? His silky hardness filling and stretching her?

Glazed eyes half closed, her glance drifted to his mouth and a fractured sigh shuddered through her body. She expelled a second, deeper sigh and bit her lip. His raw masculinity and what it did to her was terrifying.

Face burning, she slammed her hand against her forehead, which even as she spoke was beginning to pound ominously.

‘If you want to distract people, Mathieu, and it's legitimate to use what you've got—' and he certainly had quite a lot, she thought, tearing her eyes from the hard, supple contours of his muscle-packed torso and feeling a bit dizzy as a consequence ‘—why,' she suggested, sucking in a deep restorative breath ‘don't you take off your shirt to go to dinner?'

She folded her arms across her chest, causing the silk across her hips to tauten, and fixed him with a tight-lipped smile.

‘See how you like being treated as a sex object?'

‘You would find me taking off my shirt distracting?' He was definitely finding the way the subtly shiny fabric clung to the peachy curve of her hips and thighs more than distracting. In his mind he could hear the swish of the fabric as it fell in a silken pool around her feet. The image made his body temperature rise a notch and as his imagination lingered over the soft curves the ache in his groin became more difficult to ignore.

He was asking if she would find him performing a striptease distracting…?

Rose's feeling of superiority vanished faster than her protest had the time he had kissed her. Now this was what was called shooting yourself in your own foot and then stamping on it for good measure.

She laughed nervously, her eyes sliding away as she attempted to treat his suggestion as the joke.

‘One naked man is much the same as another,' she dismissed, smiling faintly.

Well, what else could she say?

She could hardly go into gratuitous detail about how she turned into a drooling, sex-starved imbecile every time she considered the hard body that filled his superbly cut clothing.

Swallowing hard, she lifted her chin and pinned a fixed smile to her face. She had heard that lust was undiscriminating, but she had not imagined how undiscriminating until she had met this man.

‘So you would be bored?'

‘For God's sake!' she snapped. ‘That wasn't a challenge. You're an incredible-looking man with a great body,' she admitted, her attitude see-sawing between exasperation and desperation. ‘But I happen not to be one of those women who go for beefcake. A six pack does nothing for me.' Well, not up to now it hadn't, anyway.

Not that Mathieu could be categorised so neatly. Beefcake was just visual candy. Nice, but instantly forgettable, and he was neither.

What he had was far more complex and dangerous than simply the combined appeal of a great body and a charismatic smile. He had an earthy sexuality that evoked an almost visceral response in her. And there was nothing even faintly contrived about it; it was as much a part of him as his fingerprints and equally unique.

A dangerous smile lurking in the back of the platinum eyes still holding her gaze, he slid the unfastened tie from around his neck. ‘In that case,' he mused, ‘it wouldn't bother you if I…'

Rose watched, her eyes saucer-wide in horror as he began to slip the buttons of his shirt revealing in seconds a segment of golden skin sprinkled with dark body hair. Unable to tear her eyes from the erotic spectacle, Rose ran the tip of her tongue across the outline of her full upper lip and sucked in a shaky breath as illicit excitement clutched at the quivering muscles low in her pelvis and shot down to her curling toes.

‘Not in the slightest,' she agreed hoarsely. ‘Although if your father doesn't like tardiness this might not be the moment to allow your exhibitionist tendencies full rein.'

‘You would not find it that distracting, then?' he questioned with a show of silky smooth innocence that was in stark variance to the sensual, mocking glitter in his deep-set eyes as they moved from her parted lips and fastened onto her wide, dilated amber eyes.

Another button followed the first two and Rose, fighting for composure, felt the sweat break out on her forehead as he pulled the hem from the waistband of his trousers. ‘N-not in the slightest,' she said with what she suspected was the most unconvincing show of indifference this century.

‘You should never, ever play poker,
mon ange
.' His shirt hung open to the waist, revealing a large proportion of his powerful chest and a tantalising section of muscle-ridged flat stomach.

Rose was shocked and horrified by the shaft of lust that struck to the heart of her. Eyes glazed, she ran a tongue over the dry outline of her lips. The impulse to reach out and touch him, place her hands on the golden glowing skin that looked like oiled silk, was so strong she could physically taste it. She stood poised on the balls of her feet to take flight, but was unable to summon the strength to break the hypnotic hold of his smoky eyes.

Then finally she managed to turn her head sharply. Her hands clenched as she fought to calm her erratic shallow breathing and drag enough air into her lungs to stop her head spinning.

‘I prefer poker to the games you play,' she husked, feeling the unexpected sting of emotional tears fill her eyes…which was crazy because she simply wasn't a crying person.

‘I don't play games, Rose.' There was a note in his voice that she hadn't heard before. It made her want to search his face, but she knew that would be a bad idea. Looking at him made her mind mush…actually, her mind was permanently mush at the moment.

He covered the few feet that separated them in seconds. Framing her face between his hands, he tilted her head up to his.

Rose's knees sagged; the sexual smoulder deep in his eyes made things shift and tighten with painful intensity low down in her pelvis.

He's going to kiss me.

This alarming realisation was almost instantly followed by one that was even more alarming—I want him to!

Wanted him to so badly she could taste it—not, of course, that she was going to let him.

It would have been easy to defuse the situation—she could have laughed in his face, pulled away or told him he was taking the role play a bit too seriously. She did none of these. Rose took an option not on the list. Shaking like someone with a fever, she gave an inarticulate little moan, wove her fingers into silky raven strands of his glossy hair and dragged his face towards her.

Her fingers stayed tangled in his hair as he covered her mouth with his. She was sucking in a tremulous breath when his tongue slid into her mouth in a slow, sensuous exploration. Tugging gently at the pink fullness of her lower lip, he lifted his head slightly.

‘I have been wondering how you would taste.'

The erotic, husky confidence sent a thrill of illicit excitement through her trembling body.

He freed a hand from her face to trace a lone finger along her cheek. ‘I thought you might taste delicious…' He swallowed, the muscles of his throat working as he ran his tongue over the soft inner surface of her lower lip. Rose shivered and moaned softly. ‘And now I know you taste even better than that…' he completed in a throaty husk.

Eyes dilated and glazed with passion, she lifted a hand to his cheek. As her fingers slid along the hard line of his cheek and jaw somehow she caught a glimpse of movement in the periphery of her vision.

The realisation that they had an audience swept through her aroused body like an icy chill; they were not alone. She would have pulled her hand away had Mathieu not held it there. Looking past her, he said casually, ‘Hello, Sacha.'

‘S-sorry, I didn't know…'

The girl, who was beautiful, sounded as miserable and embarrassed as she looked. If Rose hadn't been dealing with her own feelings of shame and humiliation she might have felt sorry for her.

‘I just came to say that dinner…your father is waiting.'

‘We'll be right there.'

The door closed and this time he made no attempt to stop her pulling away. Well, he wouldn't, would he? There was no one to see the tender scene of seduction.

And you thought he genuinely found you irresistible? Self-disgust churned in her stomach as she backed away glaring at him with loathing.

She could not, she would not, fall for Mathieu. This was just chemistry and chemistry she could deal with, she told herself. Who better? Twenty-six-year-old virgins were not renowned for their uncontrolled sexual appetites; she had reached the conclusion a long time ago that hers was underdeveloped. Any chemistry she could ignore.

‘Now where were we?'

R
OSE
backed away so fast she almost tripped over a low table. Hastily righting it and the porcelain figurine that she had just saved, she straightened up and hitched up the neckline of her dress a protective inch before smoothing it down.

A distracted expression filtered into her wide wary eyes as her hand remained flat on the gentle curve of her stomach. She could feel the heat of her skin through the thin fabric. Mathieu's body had felt hot when she had been crushed up against him—scorchingly hot. Hot enough to melt her.

Closing her eyes, she counted to ten—slowly. When she opened them he was staring at her.

‘Was that really necessary?' she asked.

As he carried on studying her flushed face with an unsettling intensity she began to panic. What was he seeing? If he knew how and what she was feeling it would give him an unfair advantage because she as sure as hell didn't. She had never felt so confused in her life.

There was a noise outside the windows on the patio and his attention shifted briefly. Rose, who had been unconsciously holding her breath, released it on a shuddering sigh of relief.

‘They are forecasting a storm tonight. It looks as if for once they are right,' he observed, walking across to close the window. He turned as Rose was sinking into a chair. ‘It felt like it at the time.' He was genuinely shocked to recognise how necessary it had felt. He was no stranger to lust, but not since his teens had he allowed it to rule him. A man could take pleasure from his appetites without becoming a slave to them.

‘What?'

She looked so prim perched on the edge of the seat with her hands folded neatly in her lap. Her lips did not look prim—they looked swollen from his kisses. ‘Kissing you felt necessary.' It still did.

Her eyes slid from the hunger in his; a man had never looked at her that way before.

‘I'm wearing your ring.' She held out the hand in question where the square-cut emerald in its bed of diamonds caught the light. ‘I think she's already got the message. That was just plain cruel,' she observed, thinking of Sacha. ‘Or I suppose you'd call it being cruel to be kind…tough love…?' she ended on a sneer.

‘You're shaking.'

The soft interruption cut short her heated diatribe. His voice made her shiver but not as much as his touch. As she stared at his long fingers, very dark against her pale skin, encircling her wrist, a febrile shudder worked its way along her spine, followed by a second and third as her throat dried. She closed her eyes, bit her lip and dragged herself from the fog of sexual inertia that wrapped itself around her.

‘Of course I'm shaking,' she snapped, lifting her chin in an attitude of angry defiance. ‘I don't appreciate being mauled for the benefit of your girlfriend.'

‘You seemed to appreciate it pretty well at the time.'

Her fingers itched to slap the smugly complacent smirk off his face, they itched to do other things, but she wouldn't let herself think about those shameful impulses.

She was unable to deny the observation without looking like a total idiot—his normally sleek dark hair was still mussed from where her fingers had pushed into the rich, lush thatch. After a painful pause she played safe and ignored his comment.

‘What is it about me?' she asked bitterly. ‘Do I have a sign across my forehead?' she wondered, drawing a vicious imaginary line with her finger. ‘Use me because I'm so stupid I'll probably just say thank you.'

The guy with the troubled sexual identity who had dumped her at the altar, Mathieu thought, a flash of contempt appearing in his narrowed eyes as he contemplated the faceless loser who was responsible for the defensive hard-faced pose, which frankly was pretty shaky.

Rose could talk the talk but he had met hard-faced, and she was not even close to it.

Whatever his faults, he had never made any promises he couldn't keep. What sort of weak idiot, he asked himself, backed away at the last minute after making someone believe you wanted to share the rest of your life with them?

Did she still love him, he wondered, this ex who had bolted? There was no trace of any emotion so tender in her face as she jabbed a finger in the direction of his chest and snarled.

‘Well, newsflash, I'm not that stupid. Do you think I didn't know you were kissing me because Sacha was standing there? God, I hardly think it was necessary to go that far to get your message across.'

‘You know what they say about anger, don't you, Rose? It's only fear turned inwards.'

Fear as in fear of the consequences was not a bad thing—not if it stopped you doing something really stupid. ‘Very profound,' she snapped, giving him a slow handclap. ‘Where did you get that one from, Mathieu, a Christmas cracker?'

‘You're mad because you think I kissed you for Sacha's benefit?'

There were two tell-tale patches of colour on her cheeks as she rolled her eyes and said in a voice laced with sarcasm, ‘No, I think you kissed me because I'm totally irresistible to the opposite sex.' At that moment she would have settled for being irresistible to one man, just to have the pleasure of rejecting him.

Sure, that's really likely.

Ignoring the snide voice in her head, she gave a contemptuous sniff and folded her arms tight across her chest, the action unintentionally pushing her breasts together and drawing his eyes to the modest neckline of her dress.

‘I can't speak for the rest of the male sex, but you do have a seriously destructive influence on my self-control.'

Rose loosed a scornful laugh. ‘What's the punchline?'

There was a pause as their eyes locked. Mathieu's voice was flat apart from a slight ironic inflection as he said, ‘It isn't a joke.'

Or maybe it was, he mused. A joke on a man who had always prided himself on never being a slave to his basic instincts being so fascinated by a woman who, given the perversity of female psychology, was probably still hung up on a man who had broken her heart.

His jaw clenched as he struggled to contain the irrational explosion of anger that surged through his body at the thought of her still craving another man, he covered the space between them in one stride.

He pinned her with a molten stare and as he cupped one side of her face with his hand some of the anger seeped from him. Her skin was soft and warm…she was soft and warm. His thumb moved across the curve of her satiny cheek and with a tiny cry she pulled away.

‘And you feel the same way,' he said as she swung away from him.

Rose froze, then slowly, sparks of anger flying from her eyes, she turned slowly back and planted her hands on her hips as she lifted her chin. ‘Don't you dare tell me how I feel,' she snapped. ‘You haven't the faintest—'

‘Please,' he begged, cutting her off mid-rant. ‘Don't give me that garbage about knowing Sacha was there; there could have been a twenty-person choir in full voice and you wouldn't have noticed.'

She bit her lip, knowing that no matter what she said the mortified heat was going to rush to her cheeks. Who still blushed at her age, and why wasn't there a pill to deal with this affliction?

‘Because you're such a brilliant kisser, I suppose.'

‘I've had no complaints so far.' His mocking grin flashed and faded. The sombre brooding expression that replaced it was even more disturbing. ‘Look, I don't know why you have such a hard time accepting what is obvious, and there is an obvious solution. Sleep with me.'

Rose didn't say a word. She couldn't. The embarrassed flush that had coloured her face fled, leaving her deathly pale as her shocked gaze flew to his. If you took away the tension around his jawline there was absolutely nothing in his expression to suggest he had just proposed anything more momentous than picking up her dry-cleaning.

She would have treated it as a joke and laughed if her vocal cords and facial muscles had not frozen solid.

‘Think about it.' Again his manner bordered on the offhand, but then deciding to have sex with someone was probably nothing he got worked up about…neither presumably would he lose any sleep if she said no…which obviously she was going to…

Responding to the pressure of the hand in the small of her back, Rose began to walk towards the door.