Although his expression was sardonic his words were spoken with a wry amusement that increased as he regarded her unease.
‘In that case, Beth, in view of our mutual distrust, I think it would be an advantage on both sides to— cultivate a closer understanding of each other...'
It was that tiny hesitation before the word, along with the mocking hint of emphasis, that alerted Elizabeth. She had opened her mouth to accuse him furiously of listening in to her phone calls when she realised that to do so would open herself to all sorts of awkward questions. She went into a cold sweat just thinking about it. If he found out what her Uncle Simon did for a living he would soon ferret out the rest.
He raised his eyebrows as she snapped her mouth shut, almost biting her tongue.
'You were going to say something?'
‘I was yawning,' she denied cuttingly. ‘I find this conversation becoming rather boring...'
'Really? I'm finding it very interesting. In fact I find all your conversations fascinating, Beth...'
Now she was positive. Either he had listened in personally to the calls she had made from his bungalow or he had had someone else do it. Perhaps he had even had them recorded! In the depths of her naïveté Elizabeth had never even considered the possibility of such deviousness. She was savagely pleased she had called him a snake. She glared at him, her mouth quivering with the frustration of controlling her temper.
‘I do look forward to us getting to know each other better,' he continued in that sultry French accent. ‘It'll be so much easier now that we're living together.'
'We are not living together!' Elizabeth rasped hoarsely.
'Hmm, that does suggest a personal intimacy we haven’t yet achieved,' he agreed tauntingly.
'Nor ever will!' added Elizabeth emphatically.
'You think not?' He reached out and touched her trembling mouth with a gentle finger. Elizabeth's lips parted as if stung. He laughed, a low, slow, sexy rumble that brushed across her skin as he leant closer, his hand sliding around into her wind-sifted hair so that his palm possessively cupped the delicate nape of her neck while his fingers interwove with the sun-warmed strands. 'Poor little lamb, your thinking is as woolly and disordered as this soft pelt of yours. That's the trouble with lying, chérie; it gets you all confused, mixes up dreams and reality until you don’t really know where you are...'
Elizabeth knew exactly where she was and why she shouldn’t be there. The ripping talons of a hunting hawk were not supposed to feel so achingly wonderful to its prey. His second hand joined the first and she struggled against the startling discovery of how sensual a scalp massage could be as his hard fingers dug and kneaded at the sensitive flesh while his mouth glided closer and closer...
The voluptuous tingling spread from her scalp to the rest of her body, further weakening her feeble resistance. She was going to bite him if he dared kiss her mouth, Elizabeth told herself dizzily, but he didn’t give her the chance to satisfy her hunger. His mouth disappointingly bypassed hers, the hands in her hair tightening to pull her head back so that he could nuzzle at her throat, the warm, moist caress finally settling against the hot pulse just under her left jaw. His tongue was wet and rough as it sanded the betraying leap of blood in her veins. She gasped, clutching his waist as he sucked gently and then bent her head the other way so that he could pay equal homage to the opposite pulse.
Only then when he had tasted her thoroughly did he seek out her mouth, murmuring thickly with satisfaction as she carried out her mental threat and sank her white teeth sighingly into the satiny curve of his lower lip. The masculine flavour of him exploded through her senses and Elizabeth didn’t realise how rough and uncontrolled she had become until she tasted the salt in her mouth and realised what she had done. She moaned and wrenched her head away, looking in horror at the red pearl beading on his lip.
He licked at it, revealing the small split to her mortified gaze. 'First blood to you, chérie.'
The cool grey eyes flared brilliantly, sending her a smouldering message of savage approval that totally eluded her as she stared, aghast, at what she had done, not in defensive anger as she had planned, but in excessive eagerness.
‘I—I'm sorry,' she said, her voice stifled with mortification.
He let her back nervously out of his relaxed grasp, although his body was tensely alert as he watched her curious reaction to the evidence of her spontaneous passion.
‘I’m not, I liked you biting me,' he said in a dark tone that was as soft and rasping against her nerves as his tongue had been against her skin. ‘“Rich the treasure, Sweet the pleasure; Sweet is pleasure after pain.”’
She was too upset by her loss of control to be impressed by his knowledge of seventeenth-century English poetry, or to fully comprehend his meaning. She stared at him in confusion, prompting him to utter the statement of silky warning that had her scuttling down the hillside in ignominious retreat.
‘I don’t know precisely what it is you're up to on my island, Beth, but you may as well know now that I fully intend to find out. It would save us both a lot of time and grief if you just confessed here and now, while I'm in a relatively mellow mood. It might help you make up your mind to know that I still have close contacts in my former business, and that sooner or later I'm going to know everything there is to know about you.
‘It's your choice, chérie: with me or against me.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
ELIZABETH looked with dismay at the huge pile of gambling chips on the table in front of her. The croupier was pushing yet another stack towards her and she could feel the other gamblers pressing in, waiting with feverish tension for her to place her next bet so they could follow suit and share the extraordinary luck that seemed to dog her whenever she set foot in the hotel casino.
She knew next to nothing about gambling and had only chosen roulette because there didn’t appear to be any concentration or skill involved, nothing to distract her from her covert surveillance of Jack and Serena. Tonight she had been even more distracted, her whole being committed to a course of action that was totally against every principle she possessed.
'Mesdames et monsieurs, place your bets, please...'
Recklessly Elizabeth pushed all the chips in front of her on to the layout. If she could lose everything perhaps all these people would lose interest and stop staring at her. The last thing she wanted was an audience for the performance to come. She wasn’t playing with her own money anyway, since all her chips were the legitimate offspring of the complimentary five-thousand franc casino voucher provided in each guest's room.
‘I want it all on number one,' she told the man standing impassively at the end of the table, moistening her dry throat with the martini that sat at her elbow.