Mistresses: Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds. Sandra Marton
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Like a plush hotel suite, or a photograph in an interior design magazine, it was sterile of private clutter. Unlike a permanent residence there were no books, photographs, knick-knacks or stray possessions to give any clue to the character of the present occupier.
When she tired of mooching around she absently kicked off her shoes and curled up on the wide, squashy cushions of the couch, sipping her drink, nibbling snacks and closing her eyes to soak up the music. She had almost dozed off when, coinciding with the end of the jazz disc, Regan heard the distinctive closing clunk of a heavy door and a rumbling exchange of masculine voices.
She leapt up from the couch, almost tripping over in her haste, smoothing down her dress and then her hair, unconsciously biting on her lower lip as she looked towards the entranceway. The voices faded briefly to a murmur and then became more distinct, Pierre’s and one other…deeper and more staccato, edged with a weary impatience.
Suddenly Regan realised that she was curling her stockinged toes into the thick carpet, and she looked desperately around for her discarded high heels. She scooped them up and was hopping on one leg, still cramming the first shoe on her foot, when a living cliché came sauntering down the stairs.
He was tall, dark and handsome, wide-shouldered and lean-hipped, and he moved with the fluidity of an athlete.
Regan was stricken. She had gone from the ridiculous to the sublime in the space of a few hours!
This was going to turn out to be another nerve-shattering case of mistaken identity, she just knew it! Her whole mad plan had been doomed from the start.
He couldn’t possibly be the man she had been waiting for; he was simply too unbelievably perfect!
Chapter Three
‘ALLOW me…’
Regan hadn’t realised that she had dropped her other shoe until he stooped to pick it up.
‘Uh, thank you…’ she faltered, still balanced like a stork on her bare foot, stunned by the impact of his appearance.
Close up, the new arrival wasn’t as classically handsome as he had first appeared. But he was certainly tall—over six feet—and his black suit and midnight-blue shirt and tie accentuated his dark colouring. His raven hair was thick and well-shaped, springing back from a slight widow’s peak to brush his collar at the back. He was somewhere in his mid-thirties, she guessed, and already carrying a tiny trace of grey at his narrow temples.
There was intelligence in his gaze and cynicism in the hard cast of his features—a gambler’s face, tense and watchful but betraying little of his own thoughts.
His eyes, which she had somehow expected to be also dark, were a light, penetrating steely-grey, slightly hooded under their heavy lids, and his stern Roman nose was framed by prominent cheekbones and a granite jaw. For such an athletic-looking man his skin was surprisingly pale and fine-grained, except on his lower cheeks and upper lip where it was roughened by a blue-black growth that was well beyond a five o’clock shadow.
Regan had to look a long, long way up at him, and as he inclined his head to meet her curious gaze she noticed the tracery of scars writhing up the left side of his lean throat and licking up under his jaw: the unmistakable scars of an old burn. To leave such a permanent stamp the injury must have been serious, and agonisingly painful.
So…he was damaged too—only his scars were on the outside…
Regan’s eyes flickered down to the flimsy black shoe cupped in his large hand as she fought to reject the dangerous rush of empathy. She saw that his hands, too, bore evidence of scarring, but it was absurd to think that a man like him would ever want, or need, her sympathy.
‘I—I took them off,’ she explained breathlessly, lowering her shod foot to the floor and transferring her weight to it, going on tiptoe with the other to maintain stability.
He smiled at her redundant comment, a slow curve of his well-defined mouth that made her wobble on her uneven perch.
‘So I see,’ he murmured on a light, teasing note that was totally at odds with his air of hard-bitten cynicism and the hooded wariness of his eyes.
His stroking thumb measured the length of the delicate spike heel in his hand. ‘Were they hurting you?’
His voice was deep and rasping, the husky edge abrading her senses like velvet sandpaper.
‘No—I—I was just lying down…’
He arched his graceful brows and she was aghast to feel herself blush as she was visited with a sudden mental image of herself languishing nude on black silk sheets, like a slave girl awaiting the arrival of her lord and master.
‘On the couch,’ she firmly emphasised, her mouth unknowingly prim.
‘Of course,’ he agreed, the quicksilver amusement in his penetrating eyes making her wonder whether he could read her skittish mind. She went hot all over. Naive she might be, but surely she wasn’t that transparent?
She tossed her head, rejecting the appalling notion, and adopted a pose of haughty confidence which came immediately under assault.
‘May I?’
Without waiting for an answer he knelt on the white carpet and encircled the ankle of her stockinged foot with lean fingers, tugging lightly to lift it from the floor.
Regan squeaked as she teetered off balance on her spindly heel, and grabbed at his shoulders to stay upright. Even through the padding of expensive fabric she could feel the shifting layers of solid muscle.
‘What are you doing?’ she gasped, wondering if he was some kind of weird foot-fetishist. ‘Oh…’
She watched him slide her shoe back onto her foot, wiggling it from side to side to ease the fit. ‘Thank you…you needn’t have bothered,’ she mumbled, embarrassed.
He tipped his head back, making no effort to rise. ‘I enjoyed it,’ he said, meeting her wide-eyed gaze, his fingers still lightly encircling her fine-boned ankle. ‘You have very pretty feet. And legs…’ he added, brushing his fingers gently up her calf to linger in the sensitive hollow at the back of her knee.
Regan stiffened as a violent tingle shot from her toes to her groin. Her heart beat furiously in her chest and her breathing quickened. She was no longer in any doubt. This was it. This was him. ‘Thank you,’ she said again, hoping that she didn’t look as flustered as she felt.
‘I’m sorry you had such a long wait. I hope you weren’t too bored.’ Having thoroughly disconcerted her with his Prince Charming act, he rose slowly back to his full height. Regan felt as if he was surveying every inch of her on the way up, and her body prickled with awareness, her eyes darkening and her nostrils flaring at the warm, spicy male scent that rose from his unbuttoned jacket.
‘Pierre tells me that your name is Eve.’
She nodded, her eyelashes fluttering nervously at his towering proximity. Being short, she was used to men looming over her, but she wasn’t used to feeling such an acute sense of feminine self-awareness.
Unlike Pierre, he didn’t display even a flicker of scepticism. ‘How appropriate,’ he said, capturing her hand and raising her knuckles briefly to his lips. ‘In that case you can call me Adam.’
‘Your name is Adam?’ she repeated, jolted by the brush of his warm mouth into forgetting that the last thing she wanted to do was make an issue out of their names. Who would have thought one innocuous kiss on the back of her hand could feel so flagrantly erotic?
‘One of them,’ he smoothly conceded, stretching the coincidence. He lowered, but did not release her captive hand. ‘So, here we are, Adam and Eve in a garden of delights…and this time there’s not a serpent in sight.’
No serpent, just a worm who had finally turned! thought Regan, rescued from her confusion by a stirring of the wicked sense of humour which had lately been all but