With that, she was gone, giving him a brief smile as she turned to leave, and Alej was left feeling distinctly outmanoeuvred as he stared at her retreating form. Shiny strands of dark blonde hair were dangling at the back of her neck and her skirt was a scarlet sheen as it swished enticingly against her bottom.
The actress was heading towards him but he barely noticed her—he was too outraged by Emily’s liberal attitude as a myriad previously unknown and buttoned-up prejudices came flooding to the forefront of his mind. Was she really giving him the thumbs-up to bring another woman to his bed tonight, when he had been doing some fairly intimate things to her a few hours earlier? Especially when she was sleeping just a few yards down the corridor? His mouth hardened with disapproval. Was that the type of free-love world she operated in these days?
‘Alej?’
It was the classically trained voice of Kate Palmer, her short Grecian-style dress showing a lot of honed and gleaming thigh. Slanting him a slow smile, she ran her fingers through her defining fall of hair with the deliberate nonchalance of someone who spent much of her life being watched.
‘I wondered where you were.’
‘Standing right here,’ he said. ‘As you see.’
‘Do you fancy going on somewhere else?’ she questioned, just a fraction too casually. ‘I’ve been invited to a party in Kooyong and we were all thinking of going on to the casino later. Should be a good crowd.’
Alej studied her. She had the twin cachet of beauty and fame and most men wouldn’t have thought twice about accepting an offer he suspected she didn’t have to make very often. His indifference towards her wasn’t feigned and yet it infuriated him that all he could think about was Emily and the insouciant way she’d left him standing there. Was she playing games with him, he wondered—or did she still get off with the kind of foreplay which threatened to drive a man insane?
He realised that the actress was still looking at him with confident expectation and curved his mouth into a regretful smile—because who was to say he mightn’t take her up on her offer sometime in the future?
‘Not tonight, I’m afraid. Early night for me,’ he explained. ‘It’s the big race tomorrow.’
She quickly recovered her obvious disappointment and slanted him another smile. ‘Of course. Good luck. Isn’t one of your drivers in pole position?’
His heart wasn’t in it but he forced himself to continue the predictable conversation about his team’s chances, giving her time to beat a dignified retreat before he left the bobbing yacht and went in search of his car. The city was alive with a pre-race buzz of excitement and people were spilling out of bars and restaurants, but all Alej was aware of during the journey back to the hotel was the insidious invasion of desire. It heated his blood and licked at his skin. It was making him distinctly uncomfortable as his trousers strained over the throbbing hardness at his groin. His mouth was dry and his heart was racing as he entered the hotel and when the elevator deposited him in the penthouse suite, he found himself hoping against hope that Emily hadn’t gone to bed.
She hadn’t.
She was lying on the black leather sofa and she was fast asleep. His heart missed a beat. She’d changed from the borrowed red party frock and slipped into a pair of wide yoga pants and a sleeveless vest, against which her breasts rose and fell in time with her steady breathing. Before her a half-drunk cup of herb tea stood next to her computer and the closely written notebook she’d been referring to earlier. She’d let down her hair, so that it surrounded her head like a flaxen pillow, and it was that more than anything which had Alej transfixed as he stood in the doorway, feeling like a voyeur, not just to her, but to the past they had once shared.
Because she used to wear her hair flowing down her back like that when she’d been seventeen, when he used to run his fingers wonderingly through the lustrous thickness, as if it were pure, spun gold, blending into the pillow they’d made of the hay bale. He thought about just going to bed and leaving her there—except that she’d wake up cold and uncomfortable and she wouldn’t be able to work unless she was properly rested. At least, that was what he convinced himself was his motive as he began to move towards her. As he glanced down at the table he could see she’d been drawing grids and a big triangle, around which different letters were scattered so that it looked like one of those mathematical equations he’d thankfully been spared due to his lack of schooling. Right in the centre of the page the letter M was written, with a big red circle around it and a series of question marks beside it.
‘Emily?’ he said softly.
‘Alej!’ Her eyelashes fluttered open and she stirred, rubbing her fist over her eyes. ‘Sorry. I must have fallen asleep. Obviously.’ She yawned. ‘What time is it?’
She flicked him a heavy-lidded gaze and once again he felt his heart contract, because hadn’t she looked at him like that plenty of times before, in that sleepy, trusting way? Those times when she’d made him feel he could conquer the world. That everything she needed, he could provide for her. But his body had been the only thing she’d wanted, he reminded himself savagely. And maybe it still was.
‘It’s still early,’ he said evenly.
‘Oh.’ She struggled up into a sitting position. ‘Is the party over?’
But Alej didn’t want to make polite small talk. He didn’t want to pretend he felt nothing as he looked down at her blonde and ruffled beauty. ‘Were those other men you left
me for as good as me, Emily?’ he questioned suddenly.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You heard me.’
She blinked at him and he could see a faint colour begin to wash over her pale cheeks. ‘What on earth has brought all this on?’
‘Seriously. I want to know. Were they as big as me? Did they make you come as easily as I did?’
She was frowning now, half in confusion and half with something else. Something which made her tongue slide out of her mouth to moisten her lips. ‘Alej. Are you out of your mind? What on earth has brought all this on? Stop it,’ she whispered.
‘But you don’t want me to stop it, Emily. You never did. That much hasn’t changed.’
His green eyes were burning into her, making her skin feel as if it were on fire, and Emily knew she should get straight off that sofa and head for the sanctuary of her bedroom. But somehow she couldn’t seem to bring herself to move—because the trouble was that he was right. She didn’t want him to stop—she wanted him to carry on talking dirty to her all night long and looking at her in that hungry way, as if he wanted to ravish her. The blunt sexual boasts were turning her on, as she guessed they were supposed to, and the warning narrative spinning around her head wasn’t strong enough to withstand the increasingly urgent demands of her body.
And suddenly Emily had no real desire to fight them. Why would she when she’d been living without physical contact for so long? When most times she felt more like a piece of stone rather than a flesh-and-blood woman. Had abstinence brought her any pleasure or felt even a little bit worthwhile? No way. It had served only to make her isolated—but then, she’d always felt like that. She’d always been the person on the outside who was looking in. The daughter who was nothing but a burden to a socially ambitious mother and then the stepdaughter who had got in the way. Alej had been the only person who had ever made her feel as if she mattered.