A Whisper of Disgrace

‘Come over here and kiss me,’ she mumbled as his jet-dark eyes swam in and out of focus, before the effort of keeping her eyelids open became too much and she closed them again. ‘Please. Just kiss me.’

Kulal caught hold of her arms and gave her a little shake as he tried to wake her—but he didn’t bother hiding his feeling of disdain, or his growing anger for having allowed himself to get into a situation like this. Did she really think that he wanted to kiss her when she was in that kind of state?

‘Rosa,’ he accused. ‘You are drunk!’

‘I know I am.’ Her head lolled back against the soft leather seat as his unfamiliar words washed over her. ‘And it feels fantastic.’

‘If you could see yourself you would not think that,’ he raged. ‘For a drunken woman is never a pretty sight.’

‘But a drunken man is okay, I suppose?’ she mumbled. Because wasn’t this what she’d grown up with? One rule for men and a different one for women. Oh, why was the world so unfair?

‘I don’t approve of anyone losing control of themselves in such a way as this, no,’ he retorted. ‘Which is why I’m taking you home.’

The word mocked her enough to make her lips curve into an empty smile. ‘Home?’ she questioned, and for the first time a trace of bitterness crept into her voice. ‘You’re going to have a bit of a problem with that one. Because I don’t have a home. Not any more.’

Kulal leaned over her, only just managing to avoid the arms which were reaching up in an attempt to snake themselves around his neck. He wasn’t interested in this particular alcohol-fuelled sob story. He just needed to get rid of her and he needed to do it quickly. ‘Where are you staying?’ he questioned urgently.

At this, her eyes snapped open and, blurrily, she looked up at him. She tried to sit up, but somehow the effort of moving was just too much. And he had brought her attention to a much bigger problem. Where was she staying?

‘I’ve no idea,’ she mumbled, tucking her legs underneath her. It was comfortable here and she didn’t want to go anywhere else. She wanted to stay with this man with the dark face and glittering eyes because he made her feel safe and he made her feel excited. She gave a luxurious yawn as she snuggled down against the soft leather seat. ‘So I guess I’d better stay with you.’

CHAPTER TWO (#u7ba494fa-5862-59ba-b760-cd8ad7b3326b)

WARM SUNLIGHT FLOODED over Rosa’s face and for a moment she wriggled, reluctant to leave the hypnotic dream which felt curiously realistic.

‘I know you’re awake.’

The hard, accented voice crashed into her dream and shattered it—even though it was the voice of the man who was responsible for the erotic images which had punctured her restless night.

Her throat feeling as dry as a summer beach, Rosa opened her eyes to find a pair of black eyes trained on her, but there was no lazy speculation or flirtation in them this morning. All she could read was anger and... She cringed. Yes, that was definitely contempt she could see flickering in their ebony depths.

Woozily, she looked around her in an attempt to get her bearings as she tried to piece together the jigsaw memories of last night. Her head was pounding and her mouth felt dry and claggy and she had the feeling that something was very wrong.

Something was. She stared down at herself in horror as she realised that she was in a very large bed—and she was completely naked!

Clutching the fine linen sheet to conceal the jiggle of her breasts, she sat up and stared at the man she knew only as Kulal, who was standing glaring at her from the end of the bed, looking like some kind of dark and avenging angel.

‘What happened?’ she demanded.

‘You don’t remember?’

‘If I remembered, I wouldn’t be asking—would I?’

The disdainful twist of his mouth deepened. ‘You want to know if we had sex?’

Rosa felt her cheeks grow hot as she stared at him, appalled by his crude question. But beneath her horror beat the memory of how good it had been to have been held by him on the dance floor and she could feel an unwanted tingling in her breasts. She felt as if she’d left one nightmare and woken up in a different one—and she was going to have to be strong if she wanted to get out of this with any degree of dignity. And she could be strong. She’d proved that, hadn’t she? She had survived her mother screaming vitriol at her as she’d made her vile confession. And she’d faced the unbelievable and heartbreaking truth, that her beloved father—the single rock in her life—was not her father at all.

She prayed for the right amount of bravado as she stared into Kulal’s furious face. ‘And did we?’

At this, he smiled, and it was the coldest smile that Rosa had ever seen.

‘Believe me, garbuua—if you’d had sex with me, you’d remember it, no matter how drunk you were.’

Rosa met the mocking expression in his eyes, telling herself that she wasn’t going to be intimidated. She just needed to extricate herself from this regrettable situation—but first of all she must face facts.

‘So we didn’t?’ she questioned flatly.

‘No.’

She held the sheet a little tighter. ‘Then how come I’m not wearing any clothes?’

‘Because I undressed you.’

‘You...undressed me? Why?’

‘Why do you think?’ he snapped. ‘Because I wanted to feast my eyes on your delectable body?’ And yet Kulal felt the sudden fierce beat of his heart as he tried to subdue the memory of her firm flesh as he had stripped her bare. He’d taken her clothes off on autopilot, averting his eyes when he had slithered that wispy little pair of lace panties down over her knees. In her uninhibited state she had grabbed him and pulled him down towards her—and he’d had the tantalising experience of having his head buried in her magnificent breasts before he had forced himself to move his aching body away. ‘If you must know, I removed your clothes because I didn’t think you’d want to leave here this morning wearing last night’s crumpled dress, or underwear.’

The gap in her memory was making Rosa feel frightened but she wasn’t going to let him know that. ‘Is that so?’ she said.

Kulal heard the disbelief in her voice and felt a slow anger begin to simmer inside him. Didn’t she realise how lucky she’d been that someone like him had been the man she’d targeted last night? That somebody completely lacking in moral scruples could have taken her home and... His mouth hardened. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what happened,’ he bit out. ‘You couldn’t remember where you were staying, and just before you passed out on the back seat of my limousine, you announced that you wanted to stay with me.’

Rosa could do absolutely nothing about the blush which stained her cheeks. ‘I said that?’

‘You did,’ he agreed grimly. ‘Leaving me with little choice other than to bring you back here to my hotel. My plan was to get you inside as quietly and as unobtrusively as possible—but unfortunately, that was not on your agenda.’

She saw the furious accusation which had darkened his face. ‘It wasn’t?’ she questioned as a trace of nerves began to creep into her voice.

‘Indeed it wasn’t. You decided that as many of the people in the immediate vicinity and beyond should know exactly what you wanted—and what you wanted was to go down to the beach and look at the sky....’

Oh, God. It was all coming back to her now. He’d promised to take her somewhere to look at the stars. He’d said that to her in the nightclub as he’d held her in his arms. And in that moment, she felt as if he’d been offering her a slice of paradise. ‘What...what happened?’ she whispered.

‘I decided that an excess of alcohol, a senseless female and close proximity to the Mediterranean were a potentially lethal combination and so I carried you in here, undressed you—and put you to bed.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘So where did you sleep?’ she questioned pointedly.

He gave a short laugh. ‘When you rent a hotel villa overlooking the Mediterranean, there tends to be more than one bedroom. In fact, there are three—so I slept in the one next door.’

Rosa’s mind was spinning as she listened to his explanation, but the one thought which was uppermost was that her virtue was still intact—and that surprised her. Because she did remember the heady rush of abandonment she’d felt as he’d held her on the dance floor. She wasn’t experienced, but she didn’t need to be to realise that she’d been putty in his hands last night. That if he hadn’t been so moral, then he would have been lying beside her now. Because she had wanted him. Come to think of it, she still wanted him.

He had moved away from the bed and now that he was at a distance it gave her a better opportunity to study him. She wondered where he was from—his rich accent certainly didn’t sound Mediterranean and his skin was much too dark.

‘Who are you?’ she questioned suddenly.

Kulal tensed, realising that he had been expecting this question a whole lot sooner and knowing that his answer would bring with it a whole new set of baggage. Should he lie? Adopt some fictitious identity, knowing that their paths would never cross again? But that might add fuel to a possibly combustive situation. She had already humiliated herself through her drunken behaviour—if she then discovered that he was lying to her, then mightn’t she take out her shame on him? He knew women well enough to know that they were impossible when you rejected them. So why not keep her sweet? Why not make her appreciate just how much he had done for her?