A Dangerous Game (9 page)

his tongue sliding and probing her folds.
 
She writhed with delight,

feeling the sensations mount to their inevitable, explosive climax.

Her body convulsed and she clutched at Peter's head, digging her

fingers into his scalp, pulling him in close.
 
He waited until her

tremors had subsided, then shifted his position.

"I've got to have you," he muttered, hoarsely.

"Right now."

He entered her easily.
 
His thrusting prolonged her fading orgasmic

spasms, encouraging her to yet another peak of pleasure, this time more

gentle than the first, but equally potent.
 
Her sigh of delight escaped

at the same moment as his own deep groan of fulfilment.

Afterwards, as they lay drowsily together on the settee, she wondered

idly why he'd had such trouble controlling himself the first time they

made love.
 
Surely he hadn't been worried about being discovered?
 
He

had been the one to instigate the action, after all.
 
It was hard to

equate that performance with the one which had left her so sated

today.

Perhaps he was just nervous, she thought.
 
And then another unbidden

thought came into her mind:

why?
 
She shifted her position and felt his warm body move comfortably

with hers.
 
Stop asking questions, she admonished herself sleepily.

You're not working now.

But she couldn't stop the doubts nagging at her mind.

Chapter Two.

Lacey soon settled into a pleasant and undemanding routine.
 
After only

two weeks she was seriously bored.
 
She was working in conditions that

would have turned her friends back at the Midland General green with

envy and yet she felt a growing sense of frustration.

She knew there were plenty of people in Techtatuan who could have

benefited from her medical knowledge, people who could not afford to

come to La Primavera.
 
These were the people she should be mixing with

and talking to.
 
If Major Fairhaven wanted an accurate 'weather report'

she ought to find out more about Lohaquin, and she certainly wasn't

going to discover anything worthwhile from her rich and idle so-called

patients.
 
Why had the major sent her to this particular hospital?
 
She

would learn nothing of value here.

Her sense of frustration made her irritable, and although she was too

professional to allow it to affect her work, she found it increasingly

difficult to be sociable with people like Senor Valiente and his ever

present 'secretary', or Senora Atriega.
 
When she was accosted during

her morning rounds by a young man in the corridor, asking her where he

could find the Senora, she could barely contain her annoyance.
 
Another

nephew, she thought, irritably.

He was attractive, she had to admit.
 
With his large, brown eyes, dark,

brown hair that seemed to glint with a hint of gold, and a beautiful

smile, he was almost too perfect.
 
She liked a little irregularity in a

man's features, something that added individuality to his face.
 
This

boy looked as if he had employed a plastic surgeon to turn him into a

text-book gigolo.
 
He was smaller than average height, but his body was

perfectly proportioned, and he moved with the grace of a dancer.
 
I bet

he's practised every gesture in front of a mirror, Jacey thought

crossly.
 
Posing and preening, and calculating the effect it would have

on any woman who cared to watch him.
 
Well, it won't have any effect on

me.

She treated him to her most frosty smile.

"Senora Atriega is in Room Fourteen," she said.

"I really think you should check details like that before you

arrive."

He looked slightly surprised.

"But I only flew in from London this morning.
 
I came straight here to

see dear Julia, and give her all the gossip.
 
She's not in terrible

pain, is she?"

"Hardly," Jacey said coolly.

"Terribly bored, most likely."

"I'll cheer her up."
 
He smiled disarmingly.

"Isn't that what friends are for?"

Jacey was getting irritated by his pretensions.
 
Just flown in from

London?
 
Did he really expect her to believe such a stupid story?

"Well, "friend" is a new name for it," she observed acidly.

"But it's probably more honest than calling yourself the Senora's

nephew."

He looked momentarily puzzled and then his smile broadened.

"That's what they all say, isn't it?

Nephew, or cousin, maybe?
 
But I'm not like the others."

"You look just like them to me she said.

"Really?"
 
He stepped back and his brown eyes wandered over her body.

It was an impudently sexual appraisal, and she suddenly felt glad that

she was covered by her straight-cut, white doctor's coat.

"Well, you certainly don't look just like any doctor I've ever seen."

He struck a pose, one hand on his hip.

"Would you like to give me a thorough medical?
 
I'm sure it would be

very arousing for both of us."

What would it be like to make love to a professional she wondered

suddenly.
 
A man who was being paid to please her?
 
Would it excite

her?

Or would she feel cheap and maybe slightly ridiculous?
 
Would she

wonder what he was really thinking while he used all his skills on her

body, and murmured his standard repertoire of compliments?
 
She had

read that female prostitutes switched off their emotions when they were

working.
 
It was all mechanical for them: get it up, get it in, and get

him out of the door.
 
Would male prostitutes be equally dispassionate?

Surely a man would have to think about something to turn himself on,

particularly if his client was unattractive.

"So, do you want to make a booking?"
 
She came back to the present with

a jolt.
 
He was still smiling at her.

"I'm very clean, very discreet, and very imaginative."

"And no doubt very expensive, too?"
 
she said, curious to know how he

would respond.

He hesitated for a moment.

"A thousand dollars.
 
American dollars, of course."

She stared at him for a moment and then laughed derisively.

"Are you crazy?
 
No man in the world is worth a thousand dollars, and

certainly not second hand goods like you."

"It's for a whole night."
 
He sounded slightly piqued.

"I wouldn't pay that for a whole week," she scoffed.

He shrugged.

"Then I'll just have to go and be nice to Julia."

And more fool her, if she parts with that kind of money for sex, Jacey

thought, watching him walk down the corridor.
 
He does have a nice

tight little bum, she thought, and then checked herself crossly.
 
I bet

he knows it, too, conceited little brat.

But she did have a sneaking sympathy for him, and others like him.

Even her brief experience of Guachtal had shown her that the majority

of people there were poor; for most of them there was probably no

escape from their poverty except to sell their bodies.
 
Could she

really blame that beautiful young man for cashing in on his assets?

What would I have done, she wondered, if I had been born here?
 
Would I

have married, produced a dozen children, and been worn out by the time

I was thirty?
 
Or would I have sold myself to the highest bidder? After

all, men use us, so why shouldn't we use them?
 
The thought prompted a

memory.
 
A memory she did not want, which had a habit of resurfacing

when she least expected it.

A man in an elegantly tailored suit, looking incredibly sexy and

desirable.
 
And a wide-eyed girl standing next to him, dressed in

white, her burnished, red hair piled up and held in place by a circlet

of tiny, white flowers.
 
My wedding day, she thought.
 
Supposedly the

happiest day in any woman's life.
 
What sentimental crap.

Despite the fact that she was married in a registry office, she had

wanted to wear white.
 
Faisel had promised her a religious wedding when

she returned home with him.
 
She did not question why he wanted a civil

ceremony in England first.
 
Her parents had attended, looking unhappy

because they disapproved of Faisel and the way he had steamrollered her

into a quick marriage.

They were also unhappy that she was going to fly back to the Arab

States with him that evening.

It's a holiday, she had told them.
 
A honeymoon.
 
And I have to meet

his family.
 
She repeated all the lies Faisel had told her.
 
We'll be

back in London soon.
 
Faisel is going to work in his father's City

office.

I'm going to apply to London University to study medicine.

Faisel had seemed only a little concerned at her parents' misgivings.

It was natural, he said.
 
They felt they were losing their only

daughter.
 
When he returned to England with Jacey he would make a

special effort to win her parents' approval.
 
And I believed him, she

remembered.
 
I believed all his lies.

The time that passed between her marriage ceremony and her arrival at

Faisel's home was still a blur in her mind, a jumble of images: the