Temporary Mistress: Mistress for a Weekend / Mistress on Demand / Public Wife, Private Mistress

Her stomach lurched. He had gone back to the hotel boutique? She didn’t know whether to be flattered or horrified.

‘You thought I might have been lying about who I was?’ she croaked.

‘Well, I didn’t think you’d really be fool enough to try and screw me under your real name.’

She stiffened, fighting a hot wave of shame. ‘There’s no need to be crude!’

His mouth compressed to a cruel line. ‘Oh, there’s every need. After all, what you did to me was the essence of crudity.’

She put her hands to her blazing cheeks. ‘So I changed my mind—that’s supposed to be a woman’s prerogative,’ she said, her words muffled with mortification.

‘The hell you did,’ he grated, stalking closer, deliberately menacing her with his size. ‘You got me precisely where you wanted me, and I played right into your hands by acting the gentleman. I won’t make that mistake again.’

She swallowed hard, dismayed by her body’s response to his nearness. Surely he didn’t mean to pick up where they’d left off last night? She ran her damp hands down the uneven seams of the cheap T-shirt.

‘I—I don’t understand,’ she said, bewildered by his strange intensity. Why was he making it sound as if she was the dangerous one?

‘Tell me, Nora, is there some personal history between us that I don’t know about? Did I reject you at some point? Have I dated someone you know or slept with your sister—?’

She backed further into the room, wide-eyed with confusion at his sudden change of tack. ‘I don’t have a sister.’ Only a brother who was living in Florida, well out of range of any screams for help.

‘There must be something—some reason that you’re willing to go to such lengths to discredit me,’ he said. ‘Is this some kind of vendetta? What’s so important that you were willing to prostitute yourself for the sake of getting even with me?’

The heat drained from her cheeks. ‘Vendetta?’ she repeated shakily, putting a hand to her throbbing head.

She knew she had acted like a reckless idiot, but a prostitute? The accusation was too absurd to be insulting. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Come on, Nora, a woman doesn’t call a man a snake and threaten to ruin him without some very personal feelings being involved—’

‘I never called you a snake!’ she protested.

His face tightened in contempt. ‘If you’re going to lie, Nora, at least try and make it believeable—’

‘I am not lying!’ she shouted at him, almost blowing off the top of her head in the process, her slight body vibrating with outrage.

A sneer curled the corner of his mouth. ‘Doug reported your conversation verbatim. You want me to call him up as a witness? Or was that comment about a bribe a hint that you’d prefer to be paid? Unfortunately for you, my stinking personal morality draws the line at giving in to blackmail. I’ll see you in hell before I give you a cent!’

Nora had the strange feeling she was there already. She pressed a fist against her churning stomach as a light belatedly went on inside her fogged brain.

The man with the roses! ‘I—D-do you mean—the flowers were from you?’ she stuttered weakly.

He stilled, his eyes narrowing. ‘You told Doug you knew who sent them.’

‘I thought I did—I thought it was Ryan,’ she murmured, collapsing down on to the oatmeal-coloured easy chair. ‘Why did you send me roses?’

‘I didn’t,’ he replied bluntly, shattering any romantic illusions she might have been building up. He planted himself in front of her, hands thrust into his pockets as if to physically restrain himself from putting them around her pale throat and throttling the truth out of her. ‘That was Doug confirming your identity without putting you on the alert. I’d described you, but he wanted to be sure he had the right woman before he let me know that you’d turned up. I’m not surprised he had doubts—you look like hell.’

He had no need to sound so pleased about it!

‘That’s strange, since I’m feeling so fantastic,’ she said in a voice that dripped with sarcasm. She tipped her head back and glared up at him. ‘Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you had this Doug person watching the flat, waiting for me?’

He seemed to relish her outrage, answering her question with his own. ‘Your flatmate said you hadn’t been home, so where did you go after you left me, Nora? Who was it you had arranged to meet?’

She bristled with hostility at the mention of Kelly. ‘Nobody. Not that it’s any business of yours! Look, just because we almost—almost—’ She found herself floundering and he supplied her with a crude word that struck her like a bullet.

‘—slept together,’ she substituted with ragged dignity, ‘it doesn’t give you the right to come around here and interrogate me.’

‘Would you rather discuss it with the police?’

‘The police?’

He looked grimly satisfied at her dismay. ‘You either deal with me or deal with them.’

He had to be bluffing! ‘Are you crazy? It’s not against the law for a woman to decide not to be sexually intimate with you…’ She trailed off, remembering just how very intimate things had got between them before she had lost her nerve. The extraordinarily vivid memories of their passionate encounter had haunted her all night.

‘It is, however, illegal to steal,’ he said harshly.

Thinking about the pleasure that she had stolen from him without giving him anything in return, she blushed. She had melted like honey at each stroke of his skilful fingers, selfishly absorbed in her own gratification to the exclusion of everything else.

‘I didn’t take anything you weren’t offering,’ she denied feverishly.

‘Is that going to be your defence in court?’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. You can’t sue me for not giving you an orgasm!’

‘What?’

He looked as stunned as she had a few moments ago, and Nora was drenched in scalding embarrassment.

She jumped to her feet, her uncertain balance almost sending her reeling into his chest. He automatically reached out to steady her and a hot thrill shot up her arm. She snatched it away, rubbing at the tingling skin, humiliated to feel her nipples firming and the skin along her inner thighs tighten. Oh, God, one night of almost-sin and she was turning into a raging nymphomaniac! What on earth had made her think that he was talking about sex? She closed her eyes and felt the room revolve sickeningly around her.

‘What did you just say?’

Her eyes popped open to meet his darkly incredulous gaze. He looked as if he couldn’t believe his ears, and she hoped that he wouldn’t.

‘I—nothing,’ she mumbled, wrapping her arms defensively across her chest. She felt the whisker-burns he had given her glowing like brands on her face and breasts. His brand. She couldn’t help noticing that, this morning, the hard jaw which had rasped at her skin was as smooth and glossy as polished teak. ‘I guess we were talking at cross purposes. I’m not thinking straight—I had way too much to drink last night,’ she admitted feverishly, by way of diversion.

‘Are you trying to claim that you did what you did to me because you were drunk?’ His deep voice was coldly scathing.

She wished she could blame the booze, but she wasn’t going to demean herself even further. ‘I wasn’t then, no.’ She pushed the curls back from her face with a limp hand. ‘I only started on the vodka later—’

His eyes dipped to the inviting slogan on her T-shirt. ‘When you were celebrating your successful getaway?’

‘I wasn’t celebrating, damn it, I was trying to forget!’ Her stomach contracted with the force of her protest and she groaned.

‘What’s the matter?’

Desperate to escape from that laser-like stare, she clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘I think I’m going to be sick!’ She started for the bathroom, only to abruptly change course for the kitchen, as yet blessedly free of dire memories. Her nausea was nowhere as bad as it had been when she woke up, but at least she would gain a few minutes of precious privacy in which to regain her composure!