Mistress Of Deception

Her short bark of laughter was half disbelief, half mocking. ‘Certainly not a man like you!’

His blue eyes blazed for a second before adopting an expression of cold contempt. ‘Then why keep going to bed with me?’

She shrugged. ‘Perhaps I’m a masochist.’

‘A hedonist, perhaps, not a masochist. You enjoy pleasure, Ebony, not pain. And you can’t deny I give you pleasure.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of denying it.’

When she moved to brush past him on the way to the bathroom, his hand shot out to enclose her upper arm in a vice-like grip. ‘You can’t go from me to Stevenson,’ he rasped.

She locked eyes with him, aware of nothing but the emotional quaver in his voice. Could that be love talking? she puzzled briefly before dismissing such a stupid notion. No. Not love. Possessiveness. Jealousy. Male ego. But not love. Alan’s heart already belonged elsewhere. If he had a heart, that was. She was beginning to doubt it.

‘I have to talk to him,’ she admitted, then added, ‘I have to tell him personally that I’m not going to marry him.’

There was no way she could have mistaken the relief in Alan’s eyes. But that didn’t prove anything, except he wasn’t ready yet to give up his private supply of free sex. Free in every way. Emotionally, financially and physically. What man would want to give up such a cushy arrangement?

When he went to draw her back into his arms, she yanked out of his grasp and took a step backwards. ‘No,’ she said coldly. ‘I have to shower and dress. Then I’m leaving.’

‘What happened to breakfast?’

‘I’m not having any. If you want some, get it yourself.’

His smile was sardonic. ‘So kind of you.’

‘Oh, but I’m not kind, Alan. There again, you don’t want me for my kindness, do you?’

‘Hardly.’

‘Then don’t complain. You’ve got your way. I’m not marrying Gary. What more do you want from me?’

‘Not a thing,’ he bit out.

‘Then if you’ll excuse me?’

He watched her sweep into the bathroom, black anger in his heart. What more did he want of her? He wanted her to grovel at his feet, to beg him to visit her more often, to suffer from the same type of blind, obsessive need that was even now sending the blood pounding through his veins, making his flesh expand into a tight, painful instrument of torture.

Only an instinct that seducing Ebony this morning might rebound on him in some way made him put that solution to his frustration aside. All he could do was wait for her to leave and then he would plunge his pained body beneath the coldest of showers till he could comfortably face the day ahead.

Meanwhile he would dive back under the bedcovers and pass the time contemplating the many and varied ways he could exact vengeance on this creature who had been tying him in knots for years.

Yes, years!

Four, to be exact. He couldn’t count the first three. She’d spent most of them in boarding-school. And while at fifteen she’d been a budding beauty, her shy, almost introverted nature at that time had protected her from male admiration, his own included.

Not that he would have dreamt of seeing Pierre’s daughter in that light, especially at such a tender age. No, he was not guilty of that, thank God. Still, he remembered having enjoyed her company when he’d taken her on the occasional outing back then, finding her opinions surprisingly mature and her gestures of gratitude towards him quite touching. He actually still kept a pair of gold cuff-links she’d given him for his twenty-eighth birthday, after saving the money herself from delivering pamphlets during the school holidays.

Where had that sweet child gone to? he wondered. When had she turned from virgin to vamp?

A type of guilt twisted his heart. Surely it couldn’t have been his fault, could it? That night, in the library…She’d caught him unawares, kissing him like that. For a few seconds he’d completely lost control. Hell, he could still recall how it had felt as her soft, breathless mouth had flowered eagerly open to accept the thrust of his tongue, as well as the way her heart had beat madly against his.

For a split-second, he’d wanted to forget his conscience and just drown in her delicious young body. He’d been tempted to take it for his pleasure and his pleasure alone, knowing he could seduce her virginal flesh quite easily, knowing he could mould and form her, body and soul, to his wants and needs.

She wouldn’t have stopped him. He knew it. So in the end he had had to stop himself. He’d thought himself so right, so noble, so…good. He’d been made her guardian, for God’s sake, not her corrupter. Not even her teenage declaration of undying love had swayed his determination to put aside such a wicked temptation. Not then, nor during the subsequent years as she’d gone from child to woman, from a shy and somewhat awkward teenager to a sophisticated and successful model, had he wavered in his resolve.

The crunch had come, predictably enough, at her twenty-first birthday party. He should have known seeing her on that occasion would be his undoing. It had been three years before, on her eighteenth birthday, that his lust had first raised its ugly head. Till then, he’d only ever seen Ebony in either her school uniform or shapeless jeans and tops. Teenage girls never seemed to wear anything else.

But that fateful night, his mother had bought her a white lace dress that might have been virginal on the peg. On eighteen-year-old Ebony, complete with make-up and high heels, it looked so seductive that it was criminal. When Alan had spotted her coming down the stairs, his heart had stopped beating. Not so the rest of his body. It had leapt with a desire so fierce and so instant that he’d been thunderstruck.

He’d stared at Ebony and she had stared right back, those deep black eyes of hers showing not a hint of understanding of what was happening to him. Had she understood? Was that why she’d been so shocked that evening in the library a few months later when he’d knocked her back, scorned her offer of love?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Ebony’s thoughts and motives were a mystery to him. She was a mystery. Sometimes he wondered if those three years of sacrifice had all been a wicked waste. Maybe at eighteen she’d already started on her sexual journey; maybe she hadn’t been a virgin at all.

She certainly hadn’t been a virgin three years later. And how!

There was no peace for his flesh as he recalled what Ebony had done to him the night of her twenty-first birthday. No peace at all.

She’d been a bit tipsy, of course, and the guests had left. But that was no excuse for stripping off all her clothes and blatantly going swimming in the pool in the nude in full view of him. She’d claimed afterwards she hadn’t known he was there, but he didn’t believe her. She’d been watching out for him all night, baiting him, tempting him.

Besides, there’d been no resistance whatsoever when she’d climbed out of the water and he’d come forward to draw her dripping nakedness against him, nor when he’d claimed her supposedly startled mouth in a hungry kiss. She’d been more than willing to let him touch her all over, to take her right there by the pool, to carry her back to his room where he’d worked his will upon her body all night.

Naturally, he had heard the rumours about her, but rumours about models were rife and not always true. For some inexplicable reason, he’d been reluctant to believe she could be as promiscuous as people said she was. He had found out that night that she was all that and more. Never had he known a woman so wild and wanton and willing. She was sex mad, he decided. Totally sex mad. Just like her father.

His first thought the next morning had been that he had to keep what had happened from his mother, as he’d kept from her the rumours about Ebony’s private life. His mother thought Ebony a sweet, old-fashioned girl and he didn’t want to destroy that illusion, or the close relationship the two women enjoyed.

Maybe he had explained it badly to the naked girl in his arms. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, though he suspected he had. But what was to be gained by dressing up reality with false words of love? It wasn’t as though she were an innocent, whose sensitive feelings had to be treated with kid gloves.

They lusted after each other. That was the plain and unvarnished truth. In a way, it was fortuitous that Ebony was of such a highly sexed nature, since not many women would have endured the kind of unrestrained lovemaking he’d insisted upon in an effort to rid himself of his own insatiable need. With a bit of luck, he might not need any repeat performance.

Or so he had deluded himself at the time.

Alan made a scoffing sound just as Ebony came out of the bathroom, made-up but not dressed. She was breathtakingly nude, the exquisiteness of her beauty stabbing at his heart. And elsewhere.

God, but Mother Nature had been cruel, sending a creature like her to torment him. Or was it the devil himself who had fashioned that incredible face and body? Yes, that sounded right. Who but Satan would be wicked enough to combine all those assets, to give one woman everything that a man could possibly want? Long, silken black hair that screamed out to be stroked; exotic, thickly lashed ebony eyes that flashed fire and promised pleasure at the same time; a full-lipped smouldering mouth which would tempt a saint. And that was only her face.

Her body was another dimension, another hell to be endured. High, pointy breasts with large pink areolae and long, sensitive nipples, a delightfully tiny waist, deliciously curvaceous hips and long, long legs that wound their shapely way down to dainty ankles and feet.

Then there was her skin…

What man wouldn’t want to run his hands over her skin, the pale magnolia-like skin whose texture was like cool velvet, till it was heated by desire. Then it would glow. It was glowing now. But not with passion. With the heat of the shower. Her eyes were cold as they raked over him.

‘You still here?’ she said scathingly.

He gnashed his teeth as she went about dressing in front of him, first drawing on a silk black teddy, then sliding into a black woollen jumpsuit.

Black was Ebony’s trademark. She wore nothing else, modelled nothing else. So was her lack of smiling, her full lips looking far better fashioned into a sullen, sulky or seductive pout.