The Parenti Marriage. Penny Jordan
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was now busy conjuring up—images of a green-eyed, blonde-haired beauty wearing next to nothing, offering him the welcome and the pleasure battle-scarred warriors like his own ancestors had expected to receive as a matter of course. He, on the other hand, whilst returning triumphant from his own battle, couldn’t get so much as a drink and a sandwich, and was being confronted by the abrasive secondee he had no wish to have in his life.
Giselle’s voice cut across his thoughts. ‘I can come back tomorrow if you’re too busy to see me now.’
‘I’m leaving for New York tomorrow. If it’s urgent enough for you to come and see me now, then you’d better tell me whatever it is that’s brought you here. Sit down,’ he commanded, before speaking into the intercom. ‘Charlie, would you mind getting me a double espresso and a sandwich from across the road? Put it on my tab. I’ll be in my office.’
Charlie was the doorman, as Giselle knew.
‘Right,’ he said to Giselle when he had finished. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘I’m a bit concerned about a costing on one of the new plans,’ Giselle answered. ‘I’ve got the paperwork here.’
Saul made an exasperated sound.
‘I can’t see it whilst you’re clutching it like that, can I? Bring it here and put it on the desk.’
A shaft of sunlight penetrating the shadows around his desk gave the cheap white tee shirt she was wearing an opacity that drew Saul’s gaze automatically to her breasts as she dropped the papers on his desk. Her actions dragged the thin fabric against her body, so that her nipples were outlined in erotically sharp relief. His gaze lingered where the shaft of light was probing the cheap fabric, as though it possessed a male need to strip back the covering from her flesh and explore the sensuality beneath.
She must focus on why she was here and forget about the way her proximity to Saul Parenti was making her feel, Giselle told herself. But how could she when she could almost feel Saul’s critical gaze, underlining Emma’s comments about her?
The arrival of the doorman with Saul’s coffee and sandwich was a welcome relief, allowing her to straighten the papers and then step back from the desk whilst Saul thanked Charlie, rewarding him with a warm smile and a few words of male banter about the doorman’s favourite football team. So there was a human side to Saul Parenti—even if she was never likely to see much of it. Giselle had no idea why that should bring her such a sense of loss and exclusion. She didn’t want him to be nice to her. Not one little bit.
‘So what exactly is the problem?’ Saul demanded, sitting back in his chair and drinking his coffee.
‘It’s this reworked plan, here,’ Giselle told him. She had to lean across the desk to point out the part of the plan in question, too intent on getting the ordeal of what she had to say over and done with to be aware of the way in which her pose had brought her breasts in line with Saul’s gaze.
Saul was, though. And so was his body. And it was reacting very specifically indeed to those soft teardrop-shaped curves with their tip-tilted nipples. He eased his chair closer to the desk, to conceal the giveaway tightening of his trousers as his erection swelled demandingly against the fabric. His hunger for the sandwich the doorman had brought him had suddenly been replaced by a very different and even more insistent kind of hunger.
‘And your conclusion?’ Saul interrupted Giselle curtly. He needed to get her out of his office and get his body back under control—and the sooner the better.
Giselle’s face burned. It was obvious that Saul didn’t want to listen to her and thought that she was wasting his time.
‘There are three possibilities,’ she answered crisply, straightening up and stepping back from the desk. ‘One: the person who drew up the plan and its costing made an error. Two: they knew what they were doing and this is a deliberate attempt to defraud your company…’
‘And three?’ Saul queried, recognising now that she had moved back from him that she had spotted something that could be very serious indeed. He was in no mood to thank her, though. Not whilst his body’s reaction to her was so intense and unwanted.
‘Three: you are deliberately testing me by setting up an error to see what I will do.’
Saul stared at her, anger driving out his desire to get rid of her.
‘Let me get this straight. Are you actually suggesting that I would stoop to that kind of game-playing?’
Giselle lifted her head
‘Why not? You had my car moved.’
Saul came out from behind his desk and walked towards her. Immediately Giselle took a step back from him. She could smell the hot male scent of him and it was making her dizzy, weak, igniting a low, dull, pulsing ache that was taking over her whole body.
‘That was nothing more than an indication of my irritation on the day,’ Saul told her flatly,
Giselle defended her suspicions. ‘You don’t want me here.’
‘No,’ Saul agreed, ‘I don’t.’
And then he did what he had sworn he would not do, cursing himself beneath his breath as he reached for her, pulling her fiercely into his arms and kissing her with all the pent-up fury she had aroused in him from the moment he had first seen her.
Giselle tried to resist him. She certainly wanted to resist him. But the hand she raised to push him away had developed a will of its own and was sliding along his bare arm beneath the sleeve of his shirt, and the body that should have been arching away from him was instead melting into him.
She was all fire, nectar and ambrosia, heated by her desire to run intoxicatingly through his senses, until he was filled by his need for the scent, the feel, the taste and the sound of her as he coupled her desire to his own. His hand reached for her breast, pushing away the fabric that came between her flesh and his touch with all the urgency and impatience of a young untried youth. The dying sunlight embraced her pale flesh, firing it with its caress, and the ruby darkness of her nipple was a hard thrust of flesh that mirrored in its own way his own taut arousal.
Beneath the pressure of his kiss he could feel and taste her gasp of undeniable response to him. He wanted to devour her, consume her, take her and drive them both until they were equally satiated—even whilst the anger within him that she should make him feel that way roared and burned its resentment of his need.
She was helpless, Giselle recognised, totally unable to withstand the storm lashing at her, able only to cling to the man who was the cause of it and pray that she would survive whilst her body opened all its gateways and let down its barriers to admit the rolling, roiling ferocity that was now possessing her.
This was what she had feared, what she had denied herself for so long, and she had been right to do so, because to suffer what she was suffering now would surely destroy her.
Somewhere else in the building a door banged. The sound exploded into the sensual tension that had enclosed them, driving them apart. Saul’s chest was rising and falling as he fought for control; Giselle’s whole body was trembling.
Without a word she turned and ran, fleeing as though she was being pursued by the devil himself, not stopping until she had reached her own office, where she quickly gathered up her jacket and her bag, not daring to look behind her as she fled the building.
Saul watched her in silence. He wanted her to go. He wanted what had happened not to have happened. He wanted—
Saul closed his eyes as his body told him exactly what it wanted—no matter what he might think about its desire and no matter how much he might want to reject it. Rolling up the papers Giselle had left behind, Saul slammed them down on the desk as anger against his unwanted physical ache for her savaged his self-control.
GISELLE