Читать книгу: «Fiancee By Mistake», страница 3

CHAPTER THREE

‘WE’RE here.’

Leah registered Sean’s comment, and the fact that the car had slowed, only vaguely. She was grateful for the fact that the nightmare of a journey was over, but only now was it beginning to dawn on her that the tension that had gripped her had more to do with the man beside her than the more obvious danger of the blizzard raging outside.

Her nerves felt stretched tight, as if some cruel hand had gripped them and twisted them hard. Was she imagining things, or had Sean’s words been laced with a dark element of threat?

Certainly his declaration that ‘You’re not going to get away that easily’ had sounded ominous. But when she’d queried it he had dismissed her concern with an easy answer and an even easier smile. Though that smile had failed to convince, she admitted, drawing in a sharp, uncomfortable breath.

‘You don’t look very impressed.’

The lightness of his tone made a nonsense of her feelings.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ With an effort she forced herself to focus on the house before her, or at least on the little she could see through the thickly whirling snow. ‘It’s just it’s not exactly what I was expecting.’

That much was true at least. Small and square, with its grey stone blending in with the wintry surroundings to give it an almost ethereal quality, the cottage was far more basic, more workmanlike than she had anticipated.

‘It’s not very Sean Gallagher, is it?’ her nervousness pushed her to ask.

Immediately all the light vanished from his face, his smile fading and his lips compressing to a cold, thin slash in his face.

‘You shouldn’t equate the publicity I get with the reality,’ he declared, each word cold and clipped, and in a sudden rush of inspiration she suddenly realised just what was wrong.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you were like the part you play.’

A dismissive shrug lifted the powerful shoulders under the fine wool of his jacket.

‘It’s a common mistake. People see me in a role every week and they tend to assume that role is me.’

And he didn’t like that assumption one little bit. It was stamped into every line on his face. Which was why he had seemed so prickly, so downright hostile at moments during their journey.

She had made it plain that she had recognised him from the first; she had been in no state to hide anything from him. And, being used to people reacting to his screen persona rather than the real one, he had written her off as one of his lovesick fans who would do anything for a single glance from their idol’s brilliant blue eyes.

But while her blood seemed to curdle in her veins at the thought of being so carelessly pigeonholed, a part of Leah’s mind recognised that this fact could actually be her salvation. If Sean saw her simply as an empty-headed worshipper, he would assume that her actions earlier had been the result of excitement at coming face to face with him so unexpectedly.

So, while she couldn’t explain, even to herself, just what had possessed her to kiss him, perhaps it was better that way. She couldn’t face the prospect of him probing deeper into matters that had already severely rocked her sense of mental balance.

‘Well, are we going to make a move, or do you intend to sit here all night until we end up deep-frozen? Here’s the key…’

He tossed it at her as she gathered up her handbag, already pushing his own door open.

‘Leave the door open. I’ll be right behind you when I’ve got your case.’

The freezing blast of icy air in her face was enough to put wings on Leah’s feet. Slipping and sliding, she dashed for the cottage porch, grateful for even the minimal shelter it provided.

Ramming the key into the lock, she turned it with frantic haste, pushing open the door and stumbling into the stone-flagged hallway with a sigh of relief.

True to his word, Sean was close behind her. Dumping her case on the floor, he slammed the door shut behind him as soon as he was over the threshold.

Like Leah, he had already acquired a fine coating of snow on his head and shoulders, the white flakes brilliant and delicate against the darkness. They even, with hearts-topping effect, clung to the thick black lashes that framed his stunning sapphire eyes.

‘The kitchen’s through there…’

He waved a hand towards the end of the hall as he stamped his feet to clear the snow from his shoes, shaking himself like some large, powerful animal, spattering her with the cold drops of moisture that spun from his hair.

‘The stove will still be banked down, so it should be warm, and you’ll need…’

The words trailed off into silence as his eyes met her widened gaze, caught and held.

Why couldn’t she move? Leah berated herself. She must look so foolish—and so disgustingly vulnerable—staring at him like this. Why couldn’t she just pull off her coat and head in the direction he had indicated?

But it seemed as if her feet were rooted to the spot. She felt as if every cell in her body, every nerve-ending, was sharply attuned to some elemental magnetism that emanated from the man at her side. Any awareness of the rest of her surroundings seemed to have blurred and faded from her sight, so that there was only him and that potent tug of need which had formed in the deepest, most primitive part of her being.

If he had looked big and strong outside, in the space of the countryside, then now he appeared impossibly so—dark and powerful, the confines of the small hallway dominated by the height and breadth of him. His lean, strong body seemed too vital, too forceful to be restricted by its narrow space, its cosy domesticity.

He was more at one with the wild elements outside, as untamed as the wind that buffeted the stone walls of the cottage and came howling down the chimneys.

Because her attention was so firmly fixed on him, she knew the exact moment that the change began. She saw how his long body stiffened, freezing in the act of shrugging out of his coat. She saw the sudden darkening of his eyes, the burning black obliterating the rich blue. With her hearing made acute by heightened sensitivity, she caught the change in his breathing, the faint sound as he swallowed deeply.

‘This is the first time I’ve seen you in the light,’ he said, and his voice was strangely husky, raw-edged, as if it had not been used for some time. ‘Your eyes—they’re almost purple, the colour of pansies.’

‘They’re like Elizabeth Taylor’s, everyone always says,’ Leah responded, hearing the words and yet feeling unaware of having actually produced them. ‘But of course I don’t really look like her. My hair isn’t black, for one thing.’

Her lips felt disturbingly dry, and she wet them nervously with the tip of her tongue, then froze as she saw his dark gaze drop to follow the tiny, betraying movement. The intensity of his stare made her heart kick in her chest. Suddenly she saw the gesture from his point of view, realising the unconscious provocation it had offered.

‘I prefer your hair colour,’ he murmured. ‘That sort of sable-brown is much softer. Though right now it’s dark enough to pass for black.’

His hand came out to stroke one of the sodden strands that lay over her shoulder. His touch was very gentle, but with every cell in her body hypersensitive to the pull of his physical appeal Leah had to fight the instinctive reaction that almost had her jumping away like a nervous cat.

‘Liz Taylor is regarded as one of the world’s greatest beauties.’

‘Fishing for compliments?’

A slow smile, its sensual appeal lethal to her composure, curled the corners of that beautiful mouth.

‘Believe me, you don’t need to. You must know that you are an exceptionally lovely woman, the sort any man would be proud to have on his arm. Or…’ the smooth voice deepened deliberately ‘…in his bed.’

Those vivid eyes held Leah’s hypnotically, sapphire locked with violet in spellbound isolation from which she was totally unable to break free. She no longer saw the flawed beauty of the damaged side of his face, the raw, red marks that marred the sculpted line of his bones, the plane of his cheek. She was aware only of the glossy darkness of his hair, the unexpected softness of his mouth—and, above and beyond anything else, the burning, mesmeric force of his gaze.

‘I…’

It was all she could manage before her voice failed her completely. Twice she swallowed deeply, opened her mouth, but each time no sound came out, her ability to speak having deserted her.

The silence in the small house was so profound that his breathing seemed unnaturally loud. She could almost sense each exhalation as a warm caress across her skin, raising goosebumps of reaction all over her body.

‘I…?’ said Sean softly, lifting the single syllable on a questioning note.

His smile, the light in his eyes, seemed to say that he knew exactly what she was thinking and that he shared those thoughts. Shared the shivering sense of awareness, the heightened sensitivity to everything around them. With infinite slowness his head tilted, came nearer.

The tiny movement was enough to have Leah closing her eyes in panic, but only for a second. Suddenly fearful that he might interpret her reaction as an invitation to kiss her, she forced them open again, focusing determinedly on a single dark lock that had broken free from the sleeked back smoothness of his snow-soaked hair so that it fell forward over one straight black eyebrow.

‘Sean…’

As she spoke a single drop of molten snow slid, hung, and finally fell from his hair onto his skin, trailing slowly down towards the corner of his eye. Acting purely instinctively, Leah reached out and stopped it with a gentle fingertip, slowly retracing its path to wipe the cold dampness from his skin.

‘Don’t!’

Sharp and hard, it was a rough command that stilled the movement at once. Her eyes flew to his in a look of stunned confusion.

‘But it would have gone into your eye!’

Almost all the blue had disappeared from his iris, she realised. In its place was just a pool of black, with the tiniest rim of colour at its outer edge.

‘It might have stung.’

‘And you would hate to see me suffer even the slightest distress?’

The mockery in his voice was at odds with the heavy-lidded sensuality of his gaze, the warmth that softened his mouth.

As Leah watched with disbelieving fascination that smile grew, and with a slow, indolent movement he turned his head slightly into the hand that still rested against his face. She felt the heat of his skin, warm satin underneath her fingertips, but rougher lower down, where the day’s growth of beard abraded her palm.

She couldn’t hold back a soft murmur of response, a murmur that turned into a choking cry as she felt the new warmth of his lips against her palm. His soft kiss sent a burning reaction like a wild electric shock crackling through every nerve in her arm.

Drawing in a sharp breath, she snatched her hand away, cradling it against her breasts as if it had actually been scorched. Above it, her eyes were wide and dark as pansies in shocked reaction.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Why?’ he echoed thickly. ‘Because I wanted to. Because it felt right, and I enjoyed it. And because…’

Blue eyes smoky with unconcealed desire, he took a step closer, then another. He reached out for her hand, lifting it once more to his lips.

‘Because…’

With his dark eyes still on her face, he traced the shape of her palm in soft, brief kisses, adding the touch of his tongue as he moved up her index finger. He planted a final kiss right on its tip before turning it towards her, letting it rest on her parted mouth as if to deliver the caress back to her. Leah shuddered faintly as she tasted the mixture of herself and Sean on her own skin.

‘Because you wanted it too, didn’t you?’

‘Oh, God!’ She choked the words out, unable to respond to his soft-voiced question.

‘Didn’t you?’

She could deny it, but what would be the point? She knew he was right, and he knew it too. He could read it in her eyes, in their darkness that matched the intensity of his own, in the heightened breathing that brought hot colour to her cheeks and to the creamy breasts that rose and fell rapidly under the tight-fitting bodice of her dress.

‘Yes…’

It was a sigh of resignation, of defeat, but as soon as she had spoken she felt strangely liberated, as if some great weight had dropped from her shoulders.

‘Yes,’ she repeated more firmly, conviction lifting her voice. ‘Yes! Oh, yes!’

‘I knew it.’

A soft thud as the coat he had been in the process of removing finally hit the floor was the last thing Leah was aware of as Sean reached for her, his arms closing round her and hauling her hard up against the lean length of his body. Rough hands in her hair pulled her head back, lifting her face to his, and her mouth was captured in a wild, bruising kiss. With a tiny moan she opened her lips to him, her tongue tangling with his in instant response.

Her groan was matched by an identical one from Sean himself, and then he was kissing her again, but very differently this time. He took her lips hotly, greedily, snatching at her mouth, her face, her neck, like a man who had been starved for a long, long time and was now presented with such an array of dishes that he didn’t know which one to taste first.

One strong hand held the back of her head, keeping her face imprisoned against his, while the other tugged at her already loosened coat, wrenching it from her body and discarding it carelessly beside his own. Inserting one powerful thigh between both of hers, he pushed her backwards until she came hard up against the wall, trapped by the strength of his body.

The heat of his skin reached her through the fine velvet of her dress, and even the heavy denim of his jeans could not conceal the burning evidence of his desire for her as he crushed it against the cradle of her hips. He inched her legs further apart and she yielded willingly, sighing aloud once more as the pressure at the juncture of her legs inflamed the heated need his caresses had created there.

‘Sean…’

His name was a moan of yearning, of hunger, and his raw-edged, shaky laughter in response told her that he recognised the craving that had her in its grip. Recognised it and shared it in every way.

‘I don’t know how this happened.’ It was a rough mutter, thick and raw against her skin. ‘I only know there was no way of avoiding it. That it was inevitable from the moment I first set eyes on you. When— Dear God!’

A shudder ran through his long body.

‘I thought you were dead, or badly hurt! I thought—’

‘Sean!’ Hungry impatience made her break into his words. ‘Will you shut up and kiss me?’

‘With the greatest pleasure!’

He did more than kiss her. His mouth seemed to have turned into a finely tuned instrument of pleasure, touching, caressing, nibbling, occasionally administering tiny, sharp, demanding bites down her throat and on to the creamy skin exposed by the neckline of her dress.

And all the time his hands were busy too, moving over her body, cupping and holding her breasts. His thumbs circled the shape of her nipples, rubbing softly, bringing them into tight, excited life beneath the clinging fabric.

Leah’s head was thrown back, her eyes closed. She was on fire, every inch of her body burning up, every cell ablaze with need. Her urgent fingers pushed aside the navy sweater, sliding over the broad leather belt at his waist, a choking cry of delight escaping her as her fingertips encountered the heated softness of his skin.

Fingers spread wide, she smoothed her hands outwards and upwards over the strong lines of his chest, feeling the powerful muscles bunch and jerk under her caress. Her sensuous exploration found the rasp of body hair, the tiny, hard buds of his male nipples, and delighted in all the differences between his physique and her own.

Beneath her touch she sensed the heavy pounding of his heart, and with a deliberately sinuous, almost feline movement she slid her hips against the hardness of his arousal. Her smile was one of triumph as she sensed his heartbeat accelerate dramatically.

‘I think we’d be more comfortable in another room,’ Sean muttered against her cheek, having dragged his mouth from hers with obvious reluctance.

‘You have a point.’

Her words were almost unintelligible, but the undercurrent of shaken laughter told its own story.

With her arms linked around his neck, he half carried, half walked her towards the nearest room, kicking open the door before manoeuvring her inside. Leah had a brief glimpse of a Victorian-style tiled fireplace and large, squashy chairs covered in a rich bronze velvet before she was swung off her feet and deposited on the softness of the settee, Sean coming down on top of her.

‘Better?’ he enquired unevenly, his breathing as ragged as if he had just completed a marathon.

‘Much better,’ Leah assured him with a lazy smile, writhing languorously beneath his imprisoning weight.

‘Now perhaps I can kiss you properly.’

When Leah opened her mouth to demand to know precisely what he had been doing before, if not kissing her ‘properly’, he promptly took the opportunity to prove exactly what he meant. The thrust and movement of his tongue was a deliberate attempt to tease and tantalise her with the promise of how a more intimate invasion of her body would feel.

The hunger that had built with each touch, each caress, was now raging out of control. It pulsed through every nerve-end, making her twist violently beneath him. She needed to touch him more intimately, wanted to feel his hot skin against hers, wanted his hands on her own body.

‘You’re wearing too many clothes,’ she muttered in mock petulance, tugging at the navy sweater with impatient fingers.

‘I could say the same about you.’

‘Mmm, so you could.’ Leah moved her hips provocatively. ‘And this dress is far too tight.’

‘Is that a fact? Well, I think I could help you there.’

The Lycra that made her dress cling so closely also made it easy for him to ease the top down from her shoulders, the bra beneath as swiftly discarded. Pausing only to peel off his jumper and toss it aside, Sean came back to her again, dragging her up against him and deliberately moving his chest against the peaking tips of her nipples. His smile grew into a wide grin of triumph as he heard her sigh of uninhibited pleasure at the sensation of the roughness of his body hair against their tight sensitivity.

‘You are one sexy lady,’ he murmured against her skin, trailing hot kisses down from the smooth roundness of one shoulder to the pink-flushed curves of her breasts. Slowly, tormentingly, his mouth moved lower, so that she was whimpering with need before it finally closed over one throbbing peak, drawing it into its moist heat.

‘Oh, God!’

Leah’s body arched upwards convulsively, her head flung back in total abandon as she offered herself to the delicious sensation. Sean’s gentle tugging at her breast sent a pulse of white-hot excitement straight from its tip down to the very centre of her femininity.

‘Don’t stop!’ she begged, and felt his laughter feather warmly across her flesh.

‘I don’t intend to.’

His hands were tugging her skirt upwards, exposing the lacy tops of her stockings, the frivolous fastenings of her suspender belt. Automatically Leah raised herself to help him.

When his questing fingers slid over her hip-bones and under the wisp of silk that was the only flimsy barrier left between him and her most intimate core, she cried out sharply, the sound of her voice clashing with the soft chiming of a clock somewhere in the room.

‘God, but you’re ready for me,’ he breathed. ‘So ready. I can see that making love to you just once is never going to be enough for me. I’d want to do it again…’

His fingers tangled in the damp curls, probed gently for a second, making her move uncontrollably.

‘And again…’

Each word coincided with the stroke of the clock in the corner, creating a rhythm that forced itself through the fevered haze inside Leah’s head. It pounded against her brain, refusing to be pushed away until, in spite of herself, she found she was counting along with them.

Six… Seven

‘And again!’

Eight… Nine…

Nine! The final stroke slashed into her consciousness like a blade of ice, incising the passion from her thoughts with a single blow.

Nine o’clock! There was something— She had promised— Oh, God, what was happening to her?

‘No!’

It was a cry of shocked distress, so sharp, so shaken that even in his state of fevered desire Sean heard it and paused in confusion. Blue eyes dark and glazed with passion went to her face.

‘Sweetheart…’

‘I said no!’

She wrenched herself up into a half-sitting position, shaking fingers going to her exposed breasts, then down to her skirt in an ineffectual attempt to cover herself. But when she realised that Sean’s hands still lingered intimately at the top of her thighs she pushed them away with a violence that clearly surprised him.

What had she done? How could she have let this happen? How could she have been so foolish as to let things go this far?

Nine o’clock! She had promised Andy she would phone him at nine to let him know she had arrived safely at her mother’s house.

But she wasn’t at her mother’s, or anywhere near it. And she certainly wasn’t safe! She was here, with a man she had met only a couple of hours before—a man she knew nothing about except for his appearances on her television set, a man she had let…

‘No!’

This time it was a wail of distress and shame. How could she have forgotten? How could she have let him drive it from her mind?

‘This mustn’t happen! It’s wrong! So very wrong! I’m— I’m engaged to someone else!’

She didn’t know what she had expected his response to be. A protest, at least. Or perhaps some attempt at seductive persuasion—a few sultry kisses, a murmured, Forget him, darling, he’s history. You and I are meant to be together.

Instead, the man above her turned white with shock. The words were barely out of her mouth before he had snatched his hands away from her so swiftly that she might just have told him she was infected with some appalling disease.

With a violent imprecation he levered himself up and away from her, his long body jack-knifing off the settee before he swung violently away towards the window.

‘Engaged!’ she heard him fling at her with savage fury. ‘Of course you’re bloody engaged! You’re not free, you deceitful little bitch!’

‘Sean…I’m sorry.’

It was all she could manage. A devastating ache had taken possession of her body so that she felt as if she was bruised all over. Her exposed breasts, their nipples still swollen from his attentions, were agonisingly sensitive to the cold air that had taken the place of his warm, caressing mouth. But there was a deeper, racking sense of loss that twisted her insides into bitter knots of despair.

‘I’m really sorry.’

‘You’re sorry!’ He whirled round, blue eyes blazing in the white mask that was his face, livid marks of rage etched around his nose and mouth. ‘You’re sorry! How the hell do you think I feel? I knew—’

Once more he swore, viciously and fluently, a clenched fist slamming against his forehead as he shook his dark head in furious disbelief.

‘Of course you’re bloody well engaged! But that didn’t stop you, did it? Did it? So tell me…’

Abruptly his voice had changed, but Leah found the deadly softness of the question even more unnerving than the violence of the fury that had gone before. The febrile glitter in his eyes terrified her, so that she shrank back against the cushions, recoiling as if his words had been actual blows.

‘Tell me, you greedy little two-timing bitch, just how many do you want?’

As Leah frowned her incomprehension, unable to collect her shattered thoughts enough to even see what he was driving at, let alone answer him, he repeated the question. But this time he expanded it so that there could be no doubt as to exactly what insult he had meant to imply by it.

‘How many, my darling? Are you so insatiable that even two men are not enough for you?’