Gemini Heat (5 page)

Appraising herself in the mirror, Delia saw that all things considered, she really didn't look too bad.

Her hair and make-up were as neat and cool-looking as this insane weather would allow. Luckily she kept a small supply of toiletries at Russell's for the rare occasions when she stayed over. With these she'd been able to paint, perfume and deodorise herself to her usual fastidious standards. She was fortunate too, in that even though her conker-coloured hair was riotously thick and wavy, she had an inborn 'knack' for taming it. She could always coax it into one or another of various sleek, 'power' hairstyles, and today's was a coil at the nape of her neck. With a slight, clever twist in the pull-back, she'd smoothed in all the wayward tendrils without the need for any lacquer or spray.

Oh God, why was it so hot? Taking a small pressed powder compact from her bag, Delia dabbed at the faint traces of shine on her brow, her upper lip and her chin. It was a nightmare staying fresh when it was like this. She felt sleazy and used; faintly animalistic, as if the unnatural heat were putting her 'on heat' too. Was it a coincidence that her new cravings for sex were matched by the record-breaking temperatures?

Staring at her slightly flushed face, Delia wished she could sometimes be more like Deana. Sister dear didn't bother about conventional bandbox turnout at the best of times, but when it was hot she'd just fling on some skimpy old vest-like frock, or maybe a semi-transparent skirt and camisole, then blithely sally forth with just the tiniest pair of knickers underneath. If that! And even though this just wasn't Delia's 'thing', she had to admit that her feckless, free-wheeling twin always ended up looking like a goddess. A new age nymph, as laid back and sensual as it was possible to be, and always, repeat always, ready for sex.

Sex! Oh damn! Not that again! Delia smoothed her fingers over her navy blue linen skirt and wondered what the heatwave was doing to her hormones. Here she was, on possibly the most important business day of her life, with a pivotal interview ahead, and she was already having carnal thoughts again. Carnal in the form of a dusky mental intruder who both improved her sex-life with Russell and showed her how utterly pathetic it really was.

And that was another thing! For a fairly sexless sort of man, Russell had surprised her with a strangely salacious birthday present: a gift she'd had to wear this morning because she had no clean underwear to put on.

It felt very peculiar to be wearing a pair of lemon silk camiknickers beneath her tailored suit, instead of the usual M&S cottons. She was disturbingly aware of its lace-encrusted bodice delicately stimulating her nipples; and worse still, the feel of a fragile popper-fastened gusset working its way slowly but insidiously into her sexual furrow. Every movement seemed to tighten it against her inner lips and clitoris and she hardly dare imagine what state the garment might be in. It was so flimsy and she was sweating and already lightly aroused again. Not to mention the fact she'd had sex twice in the last twelve hours . . . She was just about to slip into a cubicle and make some intimate adjustments when there was a sharp panicky rapping at the cloakroom door.

'Delia! Please! Come quickly,' squeaked her secretary, Susie, almost tumbling into the room. 'De Guile's PA just called. You're next!' He wants you upstairs now for your "informal chat".'

A million ominous thoughts occurred to Delia as she ascended in the lift, and most of them were self-recriminations.

Why hadn't she had the guts to go home and change? Surely she could've cooked up some excuse? What on earth had possessed her
not
to go to the big man's art exhibition? It was another of de Guile's disquietingly 'random' things, but he was bound to ask the recipient of his invitation what she thought of his collection. Unfortunately for Delia, only Deana could answer that question!

Most of all, why hadn't she done herself a favour and found out a bit more about the mysterious de Guile himself? He owned the company she worked for and was one of the wealthiest men in the world, yet she'd no idea what he looked like or even how old he was.

She tried to imagine him while she waited outside his office. To picture someone so powerful and so unthink-ably rich. Logic suggested he'd look like Ross Perot or one of those silver-haired tycoons from the glamorous 'soaps'. But the only image Delia could summon was—

'He'll see you now, Mizz Ferraro,' murmured de Guile's bland, super-competent secretary.

Delia's heart started bouncing and her bloodstream flushed with adrenalin. This was stupid! He was only a man, and probably a boring old stick at that. She was good at her job, superlative in fact. What the devil had she got to worry about? And even if he did ask about the flaming exhibition, it wasn't a hanging offence to give your invitation to your sister, was it?

The office she entered was immense. From where she stood, it appeared to run the entire width of the building, and its sole occupant was a man sitting reading at a large and distant desk. A dark-haired man, who seemed engrossed in a file that lay open before him. A man whose eyes were masked by a pair of gold-framed reading glasses and whose height and body were obscured by both his clothing and the wide expanse of leather-topped wood in front of him. A man who by all that was sane and understandable in the world, should've been a total stranger . . . but it was the man who Delia had kissed and caressed and been possessed by in virtually all her waking dreams for the past few sex-obsessed weeks.

And as 'The Prince' rose elegantly to his feet and walked smoothly towards her, holding out his hand in welcome, Delia felt the same old instant sexual response she always felt.

For several seconds, she could neither think, speak nor breathe, and afterwards she often wondered how she had been able to stand.

The man wasn't real but he was
here.
This was the hard, bleak prosaic City, not the sumptuous harem of her fantasies - but it was still
him.
It was his face she'd seen in that split-second this morning; and in a notion of pure outrageousness, she knew that if she knelt at his feet now, unzippd his perfectly tailored trousers and sucked him, it'd be the same flesh she'd tasted in her fantasy.

Before her stood the stereotype, the cliche, the archetype of everything that had ever been tall, dark and handsome. A man with the mouth, the hands and the body which had initiated the entirety of her sexual pleasure since the very first moment she'd dreamed him up.

'Delia Ferraro,' he said softly, his intonation familiar in every meaning of the word. 'How do you feel today. You look a little surprised to see me.'

Delia's head was whirling. This was crazy. He didn't know her. They were
her
dreams, not his! How could he know what he was to her?

'I ... I'm sorry,' she muttered, feeling genuinely dizzy. 'You're . . . You're not what I expected. I—'

The rest wouldn't come out because great puffs of soft white light seemed to be exploding between her and de Guile. The morning heat was murder already, even in this air-conditioned haven, and suddenly it all seemed to swirl up and envelope Delia. She was definitely going to faint in the next few seconds, but just as the swaying started and the carpet seemed to tilt precariously, she felt herself being swept up off her feet and carried effortlessly across the width of the room. Almost before she could analyse precisely what had happened she was set down on a big squashy leather sofa that stood to one side in a kind of 'conversation' area; a set of opulent modern couches and armchairs arranged around a glass-topped coffee table, and standing by a breathtaking, window-on-the-city view. With her vision still impaired, much of this was lost on Delia, but in a couple of moments, she felt a glass of water being put against her lips, and a strong hand sliding behind her head, encouraging her to drink.

Th water was cool and had a faint mineral sparkle -and it was this subtle effervescence that returned her to her senses. Blinking furiously, she managed to focus on the man who was now sitting beside her, his dark, besuited knees almost touching her bare and stocking-less ones.

'All right now?' de Guile's light, velvety voice was as incredible as his looks. And as familiar. Delia had a manic, almost unbearable urge to ask him to say the word 'sublime' for her, but as her wits returned she thought better of it.

'Yes, thanks, I'm fine now,' she said as calmly as she could. 'I'm sorry about what happened just now, Mr de Guile. It's this heat... I can't seem to get used to it.'

'Mr de Guile?' Jet black eyebrows shot up in amusement - although for the life of her, Delia couldn't work out why. It was his name when all was said and done!

'How formal we are today, Mizz Ferraro.' He chuckled quietly, then without warning reached out to take the glass from her shaking hand. When he'd put it aside, he took hold of the hand again, and ran his thumb in a slow, sensuous circle around the centre of her palm. 'So warm,' he whispered. 'But it doesn't say anything about this in your personnel file, Dee, does it?' The thumb stilled and slid away, and as it did de

Guile raised her trembling hand to his lips and placed a kiss on the area he'd stroked.

As moisture spread across the hot landscape of her palm, she felt it in other places too. Between her legs, her sex rippled against the soft constriction of the camiknickers, and though her mind seemed temporarily unable to function, her hormones were firing and flowing. De Guile's tongue moved and she moaned, transported instantly back to fantasy and the Prince. She was lying on a bed, her hot back pinned against silk, as the Prince pressed his face between her splayed thighs. The dream, and the sensations, were so real that she shuffled on the leather seat, unconsciously sliding her slim skirt up the naked length of her thighs. Making ready . . .

'Mr de Guile! Please!' she squeaked, and snatched back her hand. He'd started sucking her palm and it felt obscenely erotic. 'I ... I thought I was here to talk about work . . . About my performance ratio . . .'

'My sweet Dee,' he breathed against her hand, 'I know all I need to know about your performance.' He paused then and straigthened up, pulling off his golden glasses and placing them on the coffee table.

Delia suppressed a gasp of surprise.

In her sexual dreams, she'd always had the impression that the Prince had brown eyes - to match his coal-black hair and his richly swarthy skin. Jackson de Guile had both the dark, lustrous locks of her phantom lover, and his toasted coppery complexion -but she saw now that his eyes smashed the pattern completely. They were blue. Deep deep blue. The blue of a storm-tossed eastern ocean and glittering intensely.

More than this, they were a curious shape too; long and almond-shaped, slanting up at the outer corners and slightly hooded at the inner. She knew his middle name was Kazuto, but she'd not expected his Japanese-ness to be so physically apparent.

The total effect was shocking. He'd first locked himself into her fantasy then visibly deviated from it.

Suddenly she felt lost. Out on a limb. Adrift in a strange sexual land where the signposts were rapidly disintegrating.

'Didn't you realise I wore glasses?' he enquired, blinking once as if to emphasise the exotic submarine brilliance of his gaze, 'I wear them for reading. And I've just been reading your file, Dee. Very carefully.'

'Why?' she asked, unable to disguise her stare, and wondering why on earth he kept calling her 'Dee'. The company personnel files were fairly comprehensive, but to her knowledge they'd never listed nicknames. There was something very weird going on here, she decided, but faced with the living embodiment of her dreams, she felt powerless to shape proper questions.

But he was more than the dreams. And different . . . He had all the beauty that was
de rigueur
for a sexual fantasy, but had the Prince had that thin white scar on his forehead? Had his hair been so long it needed tying back in a pony-tail like that? These new variations only made him more alluring, though, and he was as erotic in a two thousand guinea business suit as he'd been in his rampant nakedness. Even as she watched him, he threw back his head and laughed at her question. His brown throat was a long bare elegant line emerging from his sparkling white collar and Delia could've wept at her aching urge to kiss it.

'Why?' he repeated, reaching out and pressing his cool fingers on her cheek, 'Because I want you, Dee. I'm intrigued by you. You're exactly like your file, and yet you're a complete surprise too. It's like being with two different women.'

As his fingertips skated slowly across her cheek and jaw, then on and boldly down into the long, steep vee of her neckline, a bright, flashing light popped on in Delia's mind. A hazard warning beacon.

Deana! The erotica exhibition! Last night! Of course! De Guile had been at his own art show . . . and he'd met Deana.

And now he was touching
her,
Delia, like
this.
Talking to her intimately. Indecently. What had Deana
said,
for heaven's sake? What had she
done?

But as Jackson Kazuto de Guile began unfastening his Divisional Admin Manager's severe suit jacket, the answer was obvious. He was undressing her now because he had last night. Or he believed he had.

Choices and emotions whirled in Delia's brain as the sensations roiled in her body. The sensible, rational side of her said 'tell him now!' Explain it all now before he strips you naked and you can't turn back.