Rumours on the Red Carpet

‘Nothing’s got into me.’ She gave a weary sigh, knowing that not all of her frustration with this evening was Jonathan’s fault. Her nerves were still rattled from that encounter with Lucien Steele on the balcony—to a degree that she could still feel the seductive brush of those chiselled lips against her cheek and the warmth of his breath brushing against her skin... ‘I just want to leave, that’s all.’ She grimaced.

‘I’ve told you that I can’t go just yet.’ Jonathan scowled down at her.

‘Then I’ll just have to go downstairs and get a taxi—’

‘It’s a cab,’ he corrected impatiently. ‘And you aren’t going anywhere until I say you can,’ he added determinedly.

Thia looked at him searchingly, noting the reckless brightness of his eyes and the unaccustomed flush to his cheeks. ‘Have you been drinking...?’

‘It’s a party. Of course I’ve been drinking!’ Jonathan eyed her impatiently.

‘In that case I’m definitely taking a cab back to your apartment,’ Thia stated firmly.

‘I said you’ll leave when I say you can!’ His eyes glittered.

Thia’s cheeks warmed as she stared at him incredulously. ‘Who do you think you are to talk to me like that?’ she gasped.

Jonathan’s expression darkened. ‘I think I’m the man who paid for you to come to New York!’

Her eyes widened incredulously. ‘And you believe that gives you the right to tell me what I can and can’t do?’

‘I think it gives me the right to do with you whatever the hell I feel like doing!’ he sneered.

Thia felt the colour drain from her cheeks at the unmistakable threat in his voice. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you, Jonathan.’ Her voice shook as she tried to hold back tears of hurt. ‘But I do know I don’t like you like this. You’re obviously drunk. Or something.’ She wasn’t a hundred per cent certain that reckless brightness in his eyes and the flush to his cheeks had been caused by alcohol alone...

Jonathan certainly wasn’t behaving this evening—hadn’t been for the past four days, if she was completely honest—like the charming and uncomplicated friend she had known in England...

She drew in a deep breath. ‘I think it’s best if I leave now, Jonathan. We can talk later. Or tomorrow—’

‘You’re staying put, damn it.’ He reached out and grasped the top of her arm once again, the fingers of his other hand like a vice about her wrist as he twisted painfully.

Thia gave a gasp at the pain he was deliberately—viciously—inflicting on both her arm and her wrist. ‘You’re hurting me, Jonathan,’ she breathed, very much aware of the other guests in the room and the curious sideways glances that were now being sent their way.

‘Then stop being so damned difficult! I’ve said you aren’t going anywhere and that’s an end to it—’ Jonathan broke off abruptly, his gaze moving past Thia and over her left shoulder and his eyes widening before he abruptly released her arm and wrist and forced a charmingly boyish smile to his lips.

Thia’s spine stiffened as she guessed from the sudden pause in the conversation around them, the expectant stillness in the air and the way her skin tingled in awareness, exactly who was standing behind her.

Only one man had the power to cause such awe in New York’s elite and the ability to possess the very air about him...

The same man who exuded such sexual attraction that it caused every nerve-ending in Thia’s body to react and strain towards the pull of that raw sensuality!

Lucien Steele...

* * *

Lucien had remained out on the balcony for several more minutes after Cynthia Hammond had walked away from him, giving the hardness of his arousal time to subside even as he pondered the unexpected fierceness of his physical reaction to her.

Her skin—that pearly, luminescent skin—had been as soft and perfect to the light caress of his lips against her cheek as he had imagined it would be, and he could still smell her perfume...something lightly floral along with underlying warmly desirable woman. The same warmth that had surrounded him, enveloped him, as he’d shrugged back into his evening jacket ready for returning to the Carews’ party as if the woman herself were wrapped around him.

Lucien couldn’t remember the last time he’d had such a visceral reaction to a woman that he wanted to take her right here and right now. If he ever had...

All the more surprising because Cynthia Hammond, at little over five feet tall, ebony-haired and probably only twenty or so, wasn’t the type of woman he usually found himself attracted to. He had always preferred tall, leggy blondes, and women nearer to his own age of thirty-five. Women who knew and accepted that his interest in them was purely physical, and that it would be fleeting.

Cynthia Hammond looked too young, too inexperienced to accept the intensity of passion Lucien would demand from her even for the brief time that his interest lasted. And it would be brief—a week or two, a month at the most—before Lucien once again found himself feeling restless, bored with having the same woman in his bed.

No, better by far, he had decided, that he stay well away from the too-young and too-inexperienced Cynthia Hammond.

And he would have done so if, when he had finally stepped back into the Carews’ apartment, Dex hadn’t felt it necessary to take him to one side and inform him of the way Jonathan Miller had verbally berated Cynthia Hammond the moment she’d returned to the party, before physically dragging her away.

Did that mean that Jonathan Miller, the star of one of the television series currently airing on Lucien’s own network, was the friend Cyn had come to the party with?

Watching the couple as they’d stood together on the opposite side of the room, talking softly but obviously heatedly, Lucien had been unable to stop the narrowing of his eyes when he saw the way Cyn suddenly paled. His fists had clenched at his sides as he’d realised that Miller had a painful grip on her arm and his other hand was twisting her wrist, despite Cyn’s obvious efforts to free herself. The thought of a single bruise marring the pearly perfection of her skin had been enough to send Lucien striding forcefully across the room.

Jonathan Miller was one of the reasons Lucien was back in New York at the moment. The actor’s behaviour this past few months had become a definite cause for concern and required that Lucien intervene personally after receiving information that the verbal warning he had given Miller six weeks ago, about his drug habit and the affair he was having with his married co-star—the wife of the show’s director—had made little difference to the other man’s behaviour.

Another private meeting with Jonathan Miller would have to wait until tomorrow. At the moment Lucien was more concerned with the aggressive way the younger man was currently behaving towards Cyn. No matter how intense or demanding Lucien’s own physical needs might be, he would never deliberately hurt a woman—he much preferred to give pleasure rather than pain—and he wouldn’t tolerate another man behaving in that way in his presence, either.

His gaze settled on Cyn as she stood with her bared shoulders turned towards him. ‘Are you ready to leave now...?’ he prompted huskily.

Thia’s heart leapt into her throat as Lucien Steele reiterated his invitation to leave the party with him, as he offered to take her away from this nightmare. Away from Jonathan. A Jonathan who was becoming unrecognisable as the charming man she had met two years ago—a man she had thought was her friend.

But friends didn’t deliberately hurt each other, and the top of her arm still ached from where Jonathan’s fingers had dug so painfully into her flesh just seconds ago, and her wrist was sore from where he had twisted it so viciously. Not only had he hurt her, but he had frightened her too when he had spoken to her so threateningly. And it shamed her, embarrassed her, to think that Lucien Steele might have witnessed that physical and verbal attack.

‘Cyn...?’

She could see the confusion in Jonathan’s eyes and he was the one to answer the other man lightly. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake, Mr Steele. This is Thia Hammond, my—’

‘Cyn...?’

Long, elegant fingers slipped possessively, gently beneath her elbow and Lucien Steele continued to ignore the other man as he came to stand beside her. Thia felt that now familiar shiver down the length of her spine just at the touch of those possessive fingers against her skin, accompanied by the compulsion in Lucien Steele’s husky voice. She could actually feel that compulsion as that voice willed her to look up at him.

She turned slowly, much like a marionette whose strings were being pulled, her lids widening, pupils expanding, and all the air suddenly sucked from her lungs as she took her first clear look at Lucien Steele in the glare of light from the chandeliers above them.

Oh. My. God.

She had thought him mesmerising, compelling, as they had stood outside together in the moonlight, but that was as nothing compared to the intensity of the magnetism he exuded in the brightly lit sitting room of the Carews’ apartment. So much so that even this huge room, the size of a tennis court, seemed too small to hold all that raw and savage power.

His hair was so deep a black it appeared almost blue beneath the lights of the chandelier, and his bronzed face was beautifully sculptured. His high, intelligent brow, the sharp blade of a nose between high cheekbones, and his mouth—oh, God, his mouth!—were sinfully, decadently chiseled. His top lip was slightly fuller than the bottom—an indication of the sensuality he had exuded when they were outside together on the balcony?—and his jaw was square and determined, darkened by the shadow of a dark stubble.

It was the face of a warrior, a marauder, a man who took what he wanted and to hell with whoever or whatever stood in his way.

As if that savagely beautiful face wasn’t enough, his perfectly tailored evening suit—had Thia really had that gorgeous jacket wrapped about her just minutes ago?—and white silk shirt showed the perfection of his widely muscled shoulders and chest, his tapered waist, powerful thighs and long, lean legs encased in matching black trousers above those soft Italian leather shoes she had referred to so scathingly such a short time ago.

All the trappings of urbanity, in fact—an urbanity that was dispelled the moment she looked at that handsomely savage face!

A face that was dominated by those amazing and compelling silver eyes surrounded by long and silky dark lashes.

Those same compelling silver eyes now held Thia’s own gaze captive, hostage, and refused to release her until she acquiesced, surrendered to that raw and demanding power...