He had taken her and used her as a release for his pent-up fury after his argument with his grandfather, telling himself that his behaviour was justified because she herself had sought him out.
Inside his head Sander could hear his grandfather’s raised voice, see the fist he had smashed down onto his desk in his rage that Sander should defy him.
Sander moved restlessly in his computer chair. It was too late now to regret allowing himself to recall that final argument with his grandfather and the events that had followed it. Far too late. Because the past was here with him, invading his present and filling it with unwanted memories, and he was back in that Manchester hotel room, watching Ruby sleep curled up against him.
His mobile had started to ring in the grey light of the dawn. She had protested in her sleep as he’d moved away from her but she hadn’t woken up.
The call had been from Anna, her anxiety and shock reaching him across the miles as she told him that she had found his grandfather collapsed on the floor of his office and that he was on his way to hospital.
Sander had moved as quickly as he could, waking Ruby and telling her brusquely that he wanted her out of his bed, his room and the hotel, using her yet again as a means of expelling the mingled guilt and anger the phone call had brought him.
She had looked shocked and uncomprehending, he remembered, no doubt having hoped for rather more from him than a few brief hours in bed. Then tears had welled up in her eyes and she had tried to cling to him. Irritated that she wasn’t playing by the rules, he had thrust her off, reaching into his jacket pocket for his wallet and removing several crisp fifty-pound notes from it. It had increased his irritation when she had started to play the drama queen, backing off from him, shaking her head, looking at him as though he had stamped on a kitten, not offered her a very generous payment for her services.
His terse, ‘Get dressed—unless you want the hotel staff to evict you as you are,’ had had the desired effect. But even so he had escorted her downstairs and out to the taxi rank outside the hotel himself, putting her into a cab and then watching to make sure that she had actually left before completing his arrangements to get home.
As it turned out his grandfather had died within minutes of reaching the hospital, from a second major heart attack.
In his office Sander had found the document his grandfather had obviously been working on before he collapsed, and had seen that it was a notice to the papers stating that Sander was on the point of announcing his engagement. His guilt had evaporated. His guilt but not his anger. And yet despite everything Sander had still mourned him. Evidence of the same weakness that was undermining him now with regard to Ruby. A leopard did not change its spots just because someone was foolish enough to want it to do so.
After his grandfather’s death Sandra had renewed his vow to himself to remain single.
How fate must have been laughing at him then, knowing that the seeds of his own destiny had already been sown and had taken root.
He turned back to the computer, but it was no use. Once opened, the door to his memories of that fateful night with Ruby could not be closed.
The hotel bedroom, with its dark furniture, had been shadowed and silent, the heavy drapes deadening the sound of the traffic outside and yet somehow at the same time emphasising the unsteadiness of Ruby’s breathing—small, shallow breaths that had lifted her breasts against her tight, low-cut top. The light from the standard lamp—switched on when the bed had been turned down for the night—had outlined the prominence of her nipples. When she had seen him looking at them she had lifted her hands towards her breasts, as though to protect them from his gaze. He could remember how that simple action had intensified his anger at her denial of everything she was about, infuriating him in the same way that his grandfather had. The raging argument he’d had with his grandfather earlier that day had still been fresh in his mind. The two angers had met and joined together, doubling the intensity of his fury, driving him with a ferocious and overpowering need to possess her.
He had gone to her and pulled down her hands. Her body had trembled slightly in his hold. Had he hesitated then, trying to check the raging torrent within him, or did he just want to think that he had? The image he was creating of himself was that of a man out of control, unable to halt the force of his own emotions. In another man it would have filled him with distaste. But Ruby, he remembered, had stepped closer to him, not away from him, and it had been then that he had removed her top, taking with it her bra, leaving her breasts exposed. His actions had been instinctive, born of rage rather than desire, but somehow the sight of her nakedness, her breasts so perfectly shaped, had transmuted that rage into an equally intense surge of need—to touch them and caress them, to possess the flaunting sensuality of their tip tilted temptation.
They had both drawn in a breath, as though sharing the same thoughts and the same desire, and the tension of that desire had stretched their self-control until the air around them had almost thrummed with the vibration of it. Then Ruby had made a small sound in the back of her throat, and as though it had been some kind of signal to his senses his self-control had snapped. He had reached for her, no words needed as he’d kissed her, feeling her tremble in his arms as he probed the softly closed line of her lips. She had deliberately kept them closed in order to torment him. But two could play that game, and so, instead of forcing them to give way, he had tormented them into doing so, with soft, deliberately brief kisses, until Ruby had reached for the back of his neck, her fingers curling into his hair, and whimpered with protesting need against his mouth.
Sander closed his eyes and opened them again as he recalled the surge of male triumph that had seized him then and the passion it had carried with it—a feeling he had never experienced either before Ruby or after her, surely originating from his anger against his grandfather and nothing else. Certainly not from some special effect that only Ruby could have on his senses. The very thought of that was enough to have him shifting angrily in his seat. No woman would ever be allowed to have that kind of power over him. Because he feared what might happen to him once he allowed himself to want a woman with that kind of intensity?
Better to return to his memories than to pursue that train of thought, Sander decided.
As they had kissed he had been able to feel Ruby’s naked breasts pressed up against him. He had slipped his hands between their bodies, forcing her slightly away from him so that he could cup the soft weight of them. Just remembering that moment now was enough to bring back an unwanted echo of the sensation of his own desire, roaring through his body as an unstoppable force. It hadn’t been enough to flick his tongue-tip against each hardened nipple and feel it quivering under its soft lash. Nothing had been enough until he had drawn the swollen flesh into his mouth, enticing its increased response with the delicate grate of his teeth.
He had heard Ruby cry out and felt her shudder. His hands had been swift to dispose of her skirt so that he could slide his hands into her unexpectedly respectable plain white knickers, to hold and knead the soft flesh of her buttocks. Swollen and stiff with the ferocity of his anger-induced arousal, he had lifted her onto the bed, plundering the softness of her plum painted mouth in between removing his own clothes, driven by the heat of his frustration against his grandfather, not caring about the girl whose body was underneath him, only knowing that within it he could find release.
Ruby had wrapped her arms round him whilst he had plundered her mouth, burying her face in his shoulder once he was naked, pretending to be too shy to look at him, never mind touch him. But he hadn’t been interested in playing games. To him she had simply been a means to an end. And as for her touching him… Sander tensed his muscles against his remembered awareness of exactly what her intimate touch on him would have precipitated. His body had been in no mood to wait and in no condition to need stimulus or further arousal. That alone was something he would have claimed impossible prior to that night. No other situation had ever driven him to such a peak of erotic immediacy.
No other situation or no other woman? Grimly Sander tried to block the unwanted question. His subconscious had no business raising such an unnecessary suggestion.
He didn’t want to probe any further into the past. But even though he pulled the laptop back towards himself and opened his e-mails, he still couldn’t concentrate on them. His mind was refusing to co-operate, returning instead to its memories. Against his will more old images Ruby began to surface, refusing to be ignored. He was back in that hotel bedroom in Manchester. Sander closed his eyes and gave in.
In the dim light Ruby’s body had been alabaster-pale, her skin flawless and her body delicately female. The lamplight had thrown a shadow from the soft mound of flesh covered by her knickers, which he had swiftly removed. That, he remembered, had caused him to glance up at the tangled mass of hair surrounding her face, surprised to discover that the colour of her hair was natural. Somehow the fact that she was naturally blonde didn’t go with the image she had created, with her thick make-up and tight, clinging clothes.
She had met his look and then looked away, the colour coming and going in her face as her glance rested on his body and then skittered away.
If her naturally blonde hair had been at odds with his assessment of her, then her breathy voice, unsteady and on the verge of awed apprehension, had been enough to fill him with contempt.
‘You look very big,’ she had delivered, within a heartbeat of her glance skittering away from his erection.
Had she really thought him both foolish and vain enough to be taken in by a ploy like that? If so he had made sure that she knew that he wasn’t by taunting her deliberately, parting her legs with his hand.
‘But not bigger than any of the others, I’m sure.’
She had said something—a few gasped words—but he hadn’t been listening by then. He had been too busy exploring the wet eagerness of her sex, stroking his fingertip its length until he reached the hard pulse of her clitoris, and by that stage she had begun to move against his touch and moan softly at the same time, in a rising crescendo of excitement.