The Forbidden Touch of Sanguardo

An eyebrow quirked over the incredibly dark eyes that looked as if they were hewn from some ancient, volcanic rock. Basalt, she thought, or obsidian...darker than slate.

‘It doesn’t look enough for a sparrow,’ he murmured. The dark eyes glanced at her. ‘Fortunately you don’t appear to have the starved, size-zero look about you that so many models have.’

Celeste could hear condemnation of excessive thinness in his voice. ‘Models have to be thin!’ she was stung into retorting. She was not objecting to his criticism of size-zero models, but to the way his eyes had washed over her. The effect that slow wash had had on her...

‘It’s shamefully perverse for women in the developed world to ape those who go hungry from necessity, not fashion!’ he returned sharply.

She took a breath, making herself answer honestly. ‘You are right,’ she admitted.

For a moment she let her eyes meet his in acknowledgement of the truth of what he had just said. It was a mistake. For one endless moment she had the strangest sensation that she was drowning—drowning in a deep, fathomless ocean. Then, with an effort, she pulled her gaze away. Found that she was trembling with the effort.

‘I’m sorry—that was very blunt of me,’ she heard him respond. ‘Though it is a pity that you will not try some of these richer foods.’ He indicated the lavish spread in front of them.

Celeste glanced at them, and then back at the man who was so disturbing her. ‘They do look delicious,’ she allowed. ‘But I mustn’t.’

‘You won’t be tempted?’ he said.

There was a trace of humour now in his accented voice. A trace that did yet more disturbing things to her. As did the glint in his eyes that told her it was more than food he wanted her to be tempted by.

She gave a decisive shake of her head. Time to stop this—right now.

‘No,’ she replied. Her voice was polite, but firm. She put down her now empty plate. Looked back at him. Made herself look at him but not react to him. Made herself say in a polite, social voice, using just the sort of tone she might use to anyone at all, ‘Do please excuse me, but I have to circulate and show off this dress.’

She gave a smile—brief, polite, perfunctory. But this time she did not meet his eyes. Instead, she turned away, tall and graceful, and threaded her way into the throng.

Behind her, Rafael watched her disappear. Her second disappearing act of the evening.

Why? Why does she run from me?

That was the question uppermost in his mind—except for his overwhelming consciousness that in this second all too brief encounter his interest in her had not diminished, but intensified.

There is something about her that is drawing me to her—something powerful, irresistible, overwhelming.

Something that was sending a pulse through him. Something that was engendered by that extraordinary pale, pure beauty she possessed—the turn of her head, the flawless translucence of her alabaster skin, the perfect features of her face, delicate and exquisitely cut, the clear, luminous grey-blue of her eyes.

He knew with absolute certainty that he had felt something when she had turned that gaze on him, fully meeting his own—it was a gaze whose very brevity had told him that whatever the cause of her insistence on walking away from him, which she had now exhibited twice—it was not because she was irresponsive to him.

It is the same for her as it is for me! I know it. The stillness, the betraying dilation of her pupils, the sudden intake of breath, the collision of her eyes with mine—acknowledges, confirms her reaction to me—

It had told him all he needed to know...

Whatever had made her walk away, it was not because she was immune to him. So why had she? An unwelcome explanation intruded. Was it because she was already involved elsewhere? A burning urge to find out consumed him. Yet he did not even know her name.

He inhaled sharply, pulling himself together. It would be easy enough to find out everything he needed to know about her. She was a model, she worked for an agency, and that meant the information was out there. And if the answer was the one he realised he wanted it to be more with every passing moment, then he would set out to woo her—woo her and win her.

His imagination raced ahead, vivid and eager.

In his mind’s eye he saw himself gazing into her eyes, clasping her hand, drawing her towards him, taking her slender, pliant body into his arms and lowering his mouth to her tremulous, tender lips, tasting their sweetness, seeking the nectar within, feeling her respond to his embrace, her body contouring against his with soft sensuousness, glowing with honeyed desire as her breasts peaked against him...

But imagination was not enough! He wanted the reality.

The reality of her pale, pure beauty, which was calling to him with a subtly compelling, insistent power that was impossible to deny.

CHAPTER THREE

‘YOU WANT MORE money to renew your contract. That’s it, isn’t it?’ Karl Reiner’s voice grated.

Celeste kept her expression fixed. Karl Reiner had demanded her presence at a dinner in a West End hotel hosted by a fashion magazine keen on retaining its share of the lavish Reiner Visage advertising budget. Since she was still—just—under contract, it had been impossible for her to decline.

She deeply wished she had. Wished she could just walk off the way she had when Rafael Sanguardo had made a move on her at the charity event the previous weekend.

Not, she found herself thinking, that anyone in their right mind would put Karl Reiner and Rafael Sanguardo in the same class. The difference was total. Karl’s stocky stature and slack belly were the complete opposite of Rafael Sanguardo’s tall, lean, honed physique—just as Karl’s pouched, close-set eyes were a million miles from the dark, hawkish eyes that had rested so disturbingly on her. And Karl’s receding dyed hair, swept back into a ponytail that he mistakenly seemed to think made him look creative and bohemian, had nothing of the feathered sable of the South American’s.

Yet again Celeste felt the disquieting quickening of her pulse as an image of Rafael Sanguardo took shape in her mind. It had been doing so repeatedly ever since the weekend. She had tried desperately hard to put him out of her mind but it had been impossible—just impossible! She could bewail it all she liked, try as hard as she could, but it was no good. That encounter, however brief, had imprinted itself on her. Why, she did not know—could not understand. Could not understand why her habitual immunity to men was failing her so pitiably when it came to Rafael Sanguardo.

But if she couldn’t understand it at least she could do her determined best to ignore it. Suppress it and crush it out of her consciousness—out of her life. There was no point—none whatsoever!—in thinking about him.

What Rafael Sanguardo wanted was not what she was free to want...

An old, familiar ripple of revulsion went through her. Those slimy trails across her skin—fetid memory made tangible.

And with Karl Reiner pressingly at her side tonight, making her skin crawl, revulsion came afresh. Recrimination came in its wake. Why, oh, why had she ever got involved with Reiner Visage?

But she knew the reason now—just as she had long ago.

Rejection seared within her.

This is different! Entirely different! Karl Reiner can assume what he likes. I will never go along with it!

Nor was there anything he could say that would make her sign a new contract. She would simply go on stonewalling him, staying as composed and as civil as she could, until she was free in a few weeks’ time.

But his persistent unwanted attentions were becoming even harder than ever to endure. He was badgering her repeatedly to renew her contract, and this evening he had drunk freely, and she could see his temper mounting at her continued refusal. Now, dinner over and guests dispersing, he’d renewed the subject in the middle of the hotel lobby.

‘No,’ she said carefully, ‘it’s nothing to do with more money. I simply don’t wish to extend my contract any further. I’ve been very appreciative of it, naturally—’

‘That’s not the message you’re giving out.’ Karl cut across her brusquely.

Tight-lipped, Celeste refused to react. She knew very well that the cause of his pique was nothing to do with her not renewing her contract—it was because she wasn’t going to do what Monique Silva had done: show her ‘appreciation’ in bed.

Anger flashed across Karl’s face. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ he demanded. ‘Models are ten cents a dozen!’

‘As I say,’ she repeated tightly, ‘I’ve been very appreciative of the opportunity to represent the Blonde range of Reiner Visage, but—’

‘But nothing!’ He cut across her again. His face was set petulantly. ‘I’ve done you favours! Now it’s payback time! You damn well know what I want!’

He grabbed at her arm, closing his fingers around it. She halted, turning an icy gaze on him.

‘Take your hand off me,’ she bit out, jaw clenched. When he made no move to do so, she simply lifted his hand off her and stepped away. ‘Goodnight, Mr Rainer,’ she said decisively, and turned to go.