She was trembling; Rafiq could see it happening. So much so that the knot of silk hair was threatening to come loose. Was she close to tears also? He had a suspicion that she was—just as he had a suspicion that he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life by stopping her from leaving here.
But her last remark had got to him; it had touched a raw nerve inside that went back eight years to when he’d regretted not listening to what she’d had to say. The human being part had pricked him, because if anyone knew he was only half-human then it had to be himself. But here stood the woman he blamed for that.
So why had he stopped her when she could have been gone by now? Confusion at his own actions set him frowning as he threw himself down into his chair and tried to decide what do next. As he did so his eyes fell on the stack of papers he’d only had time to glance at before Melanie had walked into the room.
‘Tell me about William Portreath,’ he invited.
Her shoulders sagged a little, her chin dipping towards her chest to expose the long slender length of her nape. A nape he could almost feel against his fingers—fingers that actually stretched out on cold smooth marble in a feather-like caress. He drew them into a fist, sat outwardly relaxed in his chair while inside every muscle he owned had knotted in an effort to cast out
what had been daring to take a grip. His gaze dropped to where her hand still grasped the door handle. Like him, she was dubious about continuing this.
The tension rose along with the silence, and his heart began to pump unevenly in his chest. When his mobile phone began to ring he was so glad of the diversion that he answered it without even thinking about it.
It was Serena again. Of course it was Serena. She had just remembered who was financing her tour, and was using her most seductive voice to try and make him see sense.
At last Melanie moved. He didn’t. In fact his eyes, ears, his capacity to breathe had all been lost in a stress-loaded moment as he watched her fingers slacken and finally drop away from the handle altogether. She began to turn. It was slow and uncertain. She began walking back across the room with her eyes carefully lowered so he could not see what was going on behind them.
Serena was turning on the heat now, the fact that he hadn’t cut the connection giving her encouragement. She wanted them to carry on as they had been. She wanted him to remember what it had been like for them.
But he was remembering what it had been like with Melanie. He watched her come towards him in her smart suit that skimmed her slender body like a smooth outer skin, but he saw tight faded jeans and a simple tee shirt, saw himself peeling both from her wonderful flesh with hands that worshipped what they found. He saw beautifully formed breasts with rose-tinted areolae and perfect nipples that tightened at the slightest caress. His eyelashes grew heavy as his gaze skimmed downwards to recall the flatness of her silk-smooth stomach with its perfect oval for a navel and gently rounded hips that loved to be cradled in his. Shy Melanie, virginal Melanie, with a soft mouth that had trembled because she had wanted him so badly, and eyes glowing like topaz, aroused and ready to offer him her one precious gift. If everything else she had ever offered him had been lies then he knew without question that wanting him so badly she had had to give him her virginity had been Melanie’s one truth.
Should that count for something now? he pondered grimly. In his own country it would count for everything. They would have been man and wife on the strength of that one night alone. Indeed, his sense of honour had already made that decision before he had claimed his exquisite prize. It was a prize that still held a power over him as he sat here in the present listening to one woman beg for his passion while the other aroused him without having to try. He recalled a single afternoon spent upon an old-fashioned feather mattress beneath an eiderdown when her arms had clung to him and her body had accepted him with small soft gasps that had rolled his heart around. He had felt the barrier, could still feel it tempting the proud crown of his sex. ‘Yes,’ she had said in that soft breathy whisper, and it had stirred him beyond anything he could ever remember.
He was in agony, he noted ruefully. But while he sat here struggling with his own discomfort, he also had the satisfaction of seeing Melanie’s cheeks grow warm and her eyelashes flicker in a way that placed a wry smile on his lips. She knew what he was thinking and was unable to look at him because she was feeling the effects of those memories just as strongly as he was.
It was sex, nothing more. He could deal with sex—as the beautiful Serena would agree.
If he didn’t stop undressing her with his eyes she would change her mind and leave, Melanie decided as she sank down into the chair by the desk. He was daring to sit there looking as laid back as a man could look while listening to a telephone conversation, but his hooded eyes were burning through her clothing. Did he think she was too dense to know what he was doing?
A wry smile twitched his mouth. It was a mouth that should have looked mean and cold, but by some quirk of fate looked anything but. She sighed, dropped her eyes away from him and wished his expression did not reminded her of sex. One man, one afternoon, only that one experience to call upon—and she was certainly able to call upon it, she noted helplessly. All it had taken was a knowing glint in those eyes and she could see the man in all his naked glory. The breadth of his wide bronzed shoulders and long muscular torso peppered with soft dark hair and—no, stop right there.
Who was on the other end of the phone that could hold him in silence for so long? she wondered as she shifted restlessly on the chair. She wished he would speak, if only to break this terrible tension that was eddying in the air.
Sexual tension. The man had always had the power to turn her inside out with that heavy-lashed, steady stare. Perhaps he knew it, perhaps the call had finished ages ago but he was stretching out the silence on purpose just to extend the agony. Could he be that calculating?
Yes, she decided, of course he could. He had made it very clear that he didn’t want her here, but then for some baffling reason had decided to give her a chance to say what she’d come to say. Perhaps she’d touched a nerve when she’d challenged his status as a human being, and this was his idea of payback. Rafiq had pride enough for ten men. He had an ego as big as…other parts.
Oh, stop it! she railed at herself as a second wave of heat crawled up her cheeks.
Rafiq saw the blush and was reminded of the first time he’d seen her, at a friend’s country estate. He had been there as a weekend guest and Melanie had been one of the paid staff. She’d served him throughout dinner, quiet, shy, and wearing a perpetual blush to her cheeks. Every time she’d leant over his shoulder to serve him he’d inhaled the scent of her delicate perfume, had felt the soft brush of her breath and her silk hair brushing his cheek. Electric, clinging…He stopped breathing for a moment in dark recollection. Twice she’d caught his shoulder with a serving dish and had almost died with embarrassment. Twice he’d found himself making a joke about his own size in an attempt to deflect the wrath of his hostess.
‘She’s new—temporary,’ Sally Maitland had explained with the condescending tone of someone who had lived her whole life being served only by the best. ‘Leave it, Melanie!’ she had snapped in annoyance while Melanie valiantly tried to remove spilled sauce from where it had landed on the tablecloth by Rafiq’s plate. Her hand had been trembling, the heat from her cheeks hot enough to heat his own cheek as she leant across him. ‘You just can’t get the staff these days. Melanie is more used to feeding chickens than people.’
He smiled at the memory, though it was more like a grimace. Melanie had fed him a lot that weekend. She’d fed his mind and his senses by being everywhere he’d happened to be. Her perfume had lingered in his bedroom whenever he’d walked back into it after she’d been there tidying the bed; her shyly lowered eyes had followed him whenever she’d had the misfortune to be serving food. If they’d met on the stairs she’d blush like mad and scurry hastily away from him; if they’d brushed arms or shoulders she’d jump like a startled kitten and refuse, though he’d tried, to utter a single word to him. Nods and shakes had been all he’d got for his trouble.
Nods and shakes that had almost driven him out of his mind.
‘Come on, querida. Forgive me and let us put this behind us. Carlos is not expecting fidelity from me and I—’
With a flick of the hand he cut the connection. Melanie lifted her face. ‘You didn’t speak a single word,’ she said, almost accusingly.
‘No words were required,’ he drawled lazily, and smiled the kind of smile that made her feel threatened and edgy and eager to get out of here.
‘About William,’ she said firmly, ‘I think I should start by—’
‘Lunch,’ he inserted.
‘Lunch?’ Melanie offered him a perfectly blank stare.