A Question Of Marriage. Lindsay Armstrong
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seated on a bed. ‘You’re a rather brilliant actress, aren’t you?’ he commented. ‘But the only thing that’s going to get you out of here is telling me who you are and why you’re here—’
‘I’ve told you that!’ she interrupted.
‘So you have. It doesn’t wash, though.’ He studied her comprehensively, right through her clothes again, in fact, so that she started to boil beneath that dark, insolently intimate gaze. ‘What is beginning to wash is something a little different,’ he continued leisurely. ‘Could you even be a groupie, señorita, who devised a rather novel way of getting through my secretary’s net?’
Aurora’s mouth fell open. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about!’
‘No?’ The scepticism in his expression was chilling. ‘Never heard of student groupies? Girls? Believe me, it’s an occupation for some of them; it would appear to be the only reason they’re at university in the first place,’ he said with damning scorn.
Several things suddenly came clear to Aurora, including his secretary’s manner and why he never answered the phone himself, but the shock of it all rendered her speechless.
Giving him the opportunity to continue with lethal satire, ‘Why, yes. Heaven alone knows what bizarre scheme you’d concocted the other night—looking for something to steal from me to blackmail me into bed with you, perhaps?’ He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘But your actions tonight have been loud and clear—coyly refusing to tell me your name, being a seductively mysterious guest—and so on,’ he finished flatly.
To be thought of as a coy, student groupie throwing herself at his feet in a rather ‘novel’ manner caused Aurora to lose her temper completely. ‘Look here—’ she bounced off the bed ‘—I’ve had enough of this. Will you get out of my way before I scream the place down?’
‘Scream away,’ he invited. ‘The only thing that will achieve is to have me call the police.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘In fact, you have a choice. I’ll leave you here for a period of sober reflection. When I come back, either you tell me the truth or I do get the police.’
‘If you think I have any intention of staying here,’ she spat at him, ‘you’re mistaken!’
‘No, I’m not. I propose to lock you in, you see.’
Aurora flew at him, prepared to scratch his eyes out, only to find herself caught in a grip of steel. ‘Let me go!’ she gasped through pale lips.
‘I’d rather let an enraged tigress go.’ He pinioned her hands behind her back. ‘I’ve also got something of a score to settle with you, Miss Spain. Let’s see if you kiss as well as you do—other things.’
‘I never kiss under these circumstances. I’m perfectly capable of biting, however,’ she warned through her teeth.
He smiled crookedly. ‘What circumstances do you kiss under?’
‘I need to be in love or on the way to it, like any normal girl,’ she replied scathingly. ‘The last thing I can imagine with you, Professor. For one thing, you’re too old for me, for another the mere thought of doing it under duress turns me right off!’ Her green eyes were proud and defiant.
‘OK.’ He released her pinioned hands but transferred his hands to her waist. ‘In exchange for no duress, could I get a promise that you’ll keep your fists to yourself?’
‘I’m not promising anything!’
‘Then how about…’ there was the glint of wicked amusement in his dark eyes although he spoke gravely ‘…proving to me that I am too old for you?’
‘You must think I’m still in my cradle,’ Aurora retorted, ‘to fall for that old line!’
‘On the contrary, before I discovered you sneaking around my bedroom, I thought you were gorgeous, certainly of the age of consent—’ his gaze roamed up and down her figure ‘—and quite stunning.’
Aurora’s lips parted and, before she could think of a suitable rejoinder, he drew her into his arms. She breathed once, jerkily, but, to her horror, the spell of Luke Kirwan once again began to weave itself around her. And no twelve-year age difference was going to save her, she realised—not that she’d said it as anything but a crushing, heat-of-the-moment snub.
To make things worse, she also realized from the smile twisting his lips that her thought processes were about as easy for him to read as an open book. ‘Look,’ she began uneasily, ‘this is insane! You can’t just do it…’
‘I can and I’m going to, so save your breath,’ he recommended. ‘Don’t tell me there isn’t the slightest curiosity on your side?’
He moved his hands on her hips and she went to say something, stopped with her lips parted as all sorts of sensations started to run through her—and not only physical. Knowing that part of the dangerous attraction of this man for her was that she was playing with fire, for example. See if you can be unaffected by this, Little Miss Spain, she mimicked in her mind, because she had no doubt that was the gauntlet Luke Kirwan was throwing down. But it would be madness to take it up…
He did it for her. He took advantage of her confusion to withdraw his hands from her hips and cup her face lightly at the same time as he captured her green gaze so that she was unable to look away. ‘Small, neat and stylish—whatever else it is you are, my would-be robber, and, I suspect, delicious. Let’s see.’ He lowered his head.
Aurora trembled as his lips touched hers, but he said against the corner of her mouth, ‘I was right: sweet as a peach, señorita.’ And started to kiss her properly.
The crazy part about it was that he made her feel as sweet as a peach while he kissed her lingeringly, but not only that. He himself felt so amazingly good it was almost impossible to remain unaffected. How did he do it? she marvelled as he ran his hands down her back and laid a trail of feather-light kisses down her neck. With great restraint, she answered herself. This was no stolen, victory kiss—he was far too clever for that, damn him, she thought.
This was a skilled assault that made her skin feel like silk as those cool, dry lips wandered across it, and the way his hands found the curves of her body made her heartbeat triple. This was a man who made not one blunder while her senses rioted and she began to drink in the feel of him through her pores.
His height, those broad shoulders, the interesting hollows of his face, which she found herself wanting to touch, the crisp cotton of his shirt, the hard, taut length of him that she was now resting against as he stopped kissing her, with not an ounce of defiance left in her but one embarrassingly girlish word on her lips—Wow!
To her everlasting gratitude, she managed to stop herself from actually saying it as he put her away from him and steadied her before releasing her.
‘Well?’ There was sheer devilry in those dark eyes as he posed the question.
Aurora breathed deeply and had to suffer the indignity of him restoring some tendrils of hair behind her ears and straightening the collar of her blouse before she could think of a response. Then she could only fall back on the truth. ‘I’m speechless,’ she said huskily and licked her lips.
He raised an eyebrow at her with a mixture of amusement and mockery. ‘I’ll take it as read, then. And I’ll leave you to—compose yourself.’
‘I didn’t necessarily mean I was bowled over or anything…’ she began to protest not quite truthfully, but stopped with her eyes darkening. ‘You’re not still going to lock me in!’
‘Oh, yes, I am, sweetheart,’ he said coolly, then looked amused. ‘By the way, there’s an en-suite bathroom through there.’ He pointed. ‘Never let it be said I inconvenienced a guest even if they are burglars or groupies—and I’m now quite sure it was you that dark and stormy night.’ He turned on his heel and walked out and Aurora